I will present a process by which many of the prehospital providers in this country are trying to organize effective and efficient response plans for major medical incidents which could in fact include a disaster response.

Many people in the emergency medical services community, including myself, have been involved in a planning process for voluntary national EMS standards, the program being coordinated by the American Society of Testing & Materials (ASTM) F30 Emergency Medical Services Standards Committee. I chair a subtask group on Disaster Management. The committee has prepared a document containing elements, suggestions, processes and procedures from MCI/disaster response plans from EMS agencies around the country. These places include the cities of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. area, Phoenix, Arizona and other urban places. The intent of this task group is not to prepare a document as a rigid standard to cover every detail on an individual task response plan. Instead, the intent of our task group is to provide an overview of expectations of what an individual mass casualty plan should include; focusing on such topical areas as Incident Command Management, communications, triage, transportation, logistical support issues, mutual aid and ancillary support services and many other topical areas that agency planners must address in developing their respective operational response plans.