E-FINDS Tracking System and Equipment Delivery Now Statewide
The New York State Evacuation of Facilities in Disasters System (NYS e-FINDS), the emergency location tracking system accessible through the Health Commerce System (HCS) that provides patient/resident tracking to hospitals, nursing homes and Adult Care Facilities (ACFs), has now gone statewide. Under this new system, nursing homes and ACFs in all regions of NY (Capital, Central, Finger Lakes, Mid-Hudson, Long Island, Mohawk Valley, New York City, North Country, Southern Tier and Western) are now expected to complete online training of course CTI-500 available online through DOH's Learning Management System (LMS). All staff working any shifts that may be involved in emergency preparedness and response should complete this one-hour interactive training offered each day throughout August with additional trainings to be scheduled for September. In addition, staff needing refresher training or practice with newly delivered e-FINDs equipment are strongly encouraged to take the course again. Dates, times and registration information for August can be found here. The Quick Reference Card for e-FINDs can be downloaded here and saved to your computer for easy access.
Facilities statewide have (or will be receiving in the next few weeks) a free UPS delivery package of e-FINDS equipment that includes:
- Barcode wristbands pre-printed with the facility name for all residents
- A small number of wristbands marked as “training” to use for practice
- One hand-held scanner per facility (Scanners are connected to computers via a USB port – be sure your USB port has not been deactivated)
- An explanatory letter of the package’s contents
If you have a problem with your e-FINDS equipment or something is missing, please contact contact Carol Hirsch at DOH at cah10@health.state.ny.us or MacArthur Lewis at DOH at mxl22@health.state.ny.us. Both Ms. Hirsch and Mr. Lewis can also be reached at 518-473-1809.
Please note: E-FINDS equipment will be shipped to the person assigned the role of emergency response coordinator or if this role has not been assigned, to the administrator in the facility's HCS account. Please be sure these roles are up-to-date along with the address in your HCS account.
E-FINDS Equipment Delivery Confirmation: Upon receiving your e-FINDS package, please confirm delivery of these supplies by completing a short survey on (HCS) accessible on HERDS Main Menu.
Pre-loading in e-FINDS: For facilities with a fairly stable population census that would like to pre-load/pre-scan resident wristbands, at this time it must be done using the fillable EXCEL spreadsheet template available in e-FINDS and saved locally to your computer. At the time of the emergency, when facilities are notified that e-FINDS is activated, then they may upload their saved spreadsheet to the e-FINDS system. DOH is working on incorporating the ability to pre-load residents into e-FINDS, but this functionality is not available yet.
Contact: Karen Choens, kchoens@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8385 extension 165.