Accident hospital Berufsgenossenschaftliche Unfallklinik Frankfurt am Main (BGU) put its summer-season emergency responses to the test last week by running a test alert for 455 staff. As the drill showed, even in the traditional vacation months the hospital can assemble sufficient qualified staff to take care of patients in the event of major emergency. BGU is one of the largest emergency centres in the state of Hesse, with around 5,000 calls per year. To ensure that all hospital services run smoothly 365 days a year, in 2006 the BGU introduced the FACT24 service enabling medical and technical staff to be rapidly notified in emergencies and spontaneous telephone conferences set up for the emergency team.

“In the past, it was often difficult to alert enough staff in a short time. After all, in a major emergency every minute counts in saving lives“, recalls Tobias Leineweber, head of the Technical Unit at BGU Frankfurt. Until April 2006, the task of alerting emergency and standby teams was performed by the hospital’s own telephone switchboard. Seeking to speed up the notification and alerting process and concerned that an emergency could put the hospital’s telephone system out of operation, BGU Frankfurt came across the communication solution supplied by F24 AG.

Regular test alerts serve to maintain service quality
In July, BGU Frankfurt ran a test alert involving 455 staff. After only two minutes, all had been called by FACT24, using additional numbers and redialling where necessary. FACT24 requested confirmation from each individual contacted and kept the director of operations informed about the progress of the alert.
Head of operations Tobias Leineweber was satisfied with the result of 240 confirmations from staff. To test the level of emergency response in the peak summer vacation period, he had deliberately chosen a Saturday morning to launch the unannounced test alert. Only 10 staff had changed their phone numbers and could not be reached at all. “The test alert proved that even at the height of the vacation season, we would be able to mobilize sufficient qualified staff to be prepared for an emergency", confirms Tobias Leineweber. The head of operations recommends this unannounced test alert procedure to all colleagues. Leineweber believes that manually performed alerting, often a process of frantic searching and calling by the central switchboard, plus orderly manual documentation are no longer feasible options as emergency procedures. The alarm reports and itemized call records supplied by the FACT24 service serve as documentation of BGU Frankfurt’s test and emergency alerts for independent review.

Additional data is available from our press release:
"BGU: Ready for major emergencies even during holiday periods "