Hospital Radio Net Plan
Maryland-DC (MDC) ARES has an established plan for backup communications at hospitals during major disasters and mass casualty events. Following an incident that damages telecommunications infrastructure, hospitals might need alternate means to exchange critical information with their partners in health care delivery, including but not limited to other hospitals, staff members who are offsite, patients’ primary caregivers, medical laboratories and other service providers, and local and state health departments. This document describes how the plan has been implemented in Montgomery County.
BACKGROUND
As a part of their accreditation, hospitals are required maintain formal emergency management programs, develop operational plans for credible threats, and conduct training and periodic drills to exercise and evaluate those plans. Amateur Radio is explicitly mentioned in the accreditation standards issued by the [span style=color:#0645AD] [su_tooltip title=”” text=”The Joint Commission (https://www.jointcommission.org/) is the primary accreditation body for healthcare organizations in the U.S.” position=”top” background=”#222222″ color=”#FFFFFF” font_size=”16″ text_align=”left” max_width=”300″ radius=”5″ shadow=”no” behavior=”hover” class=”” outline=”yes” tabindex=”yes” reference_tag=”span” hide_delay=”0″] Joint Commission [/su_tooltip][/span] as a possible resource for emergency or backup communications, and many hospitals in Maryland include Amateur Radio in their emergency communications planning.
In Maryland, a significant number of hospitals have installed permanent Amateur Radio stations in or near the space designated for use as their emergency operations center (EOC). Each of these stations is equipped, at a minimum, to use voice and data modes (specifically Winlink) on VHF and UHF frequencies. A few stations have HF radio capability.
The three Montgomery County hospitals that have permanent Amateur Radio stations are Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring (HCH), Holy Cross Germantown Hospital (HCG), and MedStar Montgomery Medical Center (MSM). The NIH Clinical Center (on the Bethesda campus), although not a public hospital in the conventional sense, participates in local and regional emergency planning. The NIH Radio Amateur Club (NIHRAC) maintains a well-equipped station located near the Clinical Center on the Bethesda campus, and maintains liaison with the NIH Office of Emergency Management and the Clinical Center emergency management staff.
OPERATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
No plan could ever anticipate all of the communication needs that might emerge following a major incident. Instead, this plan offers some general strategies that might be helpful, with the expectation that improvisation based on your experience will often be warranted.
Usually, when you are assigned to activate a hospital in a hospital radio net, you will be given an idea of which repeaters and simplex frequencies are in use, and for what purpose. Since most Winlink gateway stations in this area are on the 2 m band, Winlink operations are generally conducted on that band. It is preferred that voice operations are conducted on the 70 cm band so that voice and Winlink operations can be conducted simultaneously at a given facility (potentially using a single multiband radio and/or antenna) without interference.
Within each jurisdiction (that is, the Maryland counties and the City of Baltimore), one or more local repeaters and/or simplex frequencies are designated for emergency communications. In Montgomery County, lists of preferred repeaters and simplex frequencies can be found on the MCACS website. In addition, there is a network of linked 440 MHz repeaters operated by the Central Maryland repeater group (CMRG) that spans about two-thirds of the state. That repeater network is customarily used to coordinate emergency traffic among hospitals in a disaster or exercise that spans multiple jurisdictions. Should the CMRG system be unavailable when it becomes necessary to pass traffic to a facility in another jurisdiction, operators should be familiar with the preferred repeaters and simplex frequencies likely to be used in that jurisdiction. The Maryland RACES network is another resource that can be used for communications with neighboring jurisdictions. See http://www.arrl-mdc.net/MDCERPsum71.htm for details.
When possible, parties at our served facilities who need to speak with one another should be invited to visit the station at their facility and have a direct person-to-person conversation over one of our radio channels. In some situations, it might be possible to place a phone call to an outside party from the station — or receive a call back — using the autopatch feature of a local repeater.
When a direct conversation is not practical, the Winlink system should be the fallback, since it closely mirrors and is interoperable with the worldwide email system that every hospital staff member is already familiar with. However, operators should know when and how to access various alternative means of passing [span style=color:#0645AD] [su_tooltip title=”” text=”The term refers to a message transmitted via Amateur Radio on behalf of any third party.” position=”top” background=”#222222″ color=”#FFFFFF” font_size=”16″ text_align=”left” max_width=”300″ radius=”5″ shadow=”no” behavior=”hover” class=”” outline=”yes” tabindex=”yes” reference_tag=”span” hide_delay=”0″] third-party message traffic [/su_tooltip][/span], including the National Traffic System, NBEMS, SHARES, and MARS. Operators should also be trained in sending and receiving messages by voice.
Winlink can be used in a number of different ways. While Winlink has a peer-to-peer messaging mode that allows messages to be exchange between two stations that
If in doubt, check the lists of preferred repeaters and simplex frequencies on the MCACS website
QUARTERLY HOSPITAL RADIO NETS
ARES members in the MDC section conduct quarterly drills in which the stations at participating hospitals are activated on a specific date and time. The overall objectives of these drills include:
- Ensure that the relevant staff at our host hospitals understand our capabilities and have procedures in place to facilitate our access.
- Verify that the equipment at each hospital is available and in good working order.
- Develop a cadre of volunteers who
- know how to set up and operate the equipment at each hospital (and deal with equipment issues that might arise);
- are capable of using voice protocols to efficiently pass traffic on behalf of the hospitals;
- know which repeaters and simplex paths are likely to be used and accessible from a given hospital;
- know which repeaters and simplex paths are likely to be used and accessible from a given hospital;
- are familiar with RMS Gateways and digipeaters that are normally accessible from a given hospital and have a toolkit of strategies for dealing with a range of contingencies that might arise. (That includes using strategically-located home stations or portable stations to serve as relays or digipeaters when the primary and backup gateways are unavailable, and
- are familiar with the finer points of the Winlink system, including tactical addresses, service codes, and templates.
In addition to these overall objectives, each individual drill might have one or more subsidiary objectives, such as providing in-depth training or practice on a specific aspect of the plan.
• Although the radios, power supplies, and antennas are installed at each hospital, you will need a laptop to run Winlink. Please get together with the other folks who are going to your hospital and figure out who is bringing a laptop. We will be limited to packet only (no Vara). There is a TNC with an attached USB-to-serial adapter installed at HCG, and the radios at the other two hospitals have built-in TNCs, with a compatible USB cable that plugs into the control head. I will bring a laptop for MSM.
• I have referred several times in this email to the hospitals by their abbreviations. These abbreviations are standardized across the state. You can find a list and map of all Maryland hospitals, together with their abbreviations, on
• You should also know that the Maryland Hospital Association divided the state into five regions. Montgomery County is in Region V, along with PG, Charles, Calvert, and St Mary’s counties. You can find a map here:
(These maps, by the way, are linked on the MCACS website under the Resources menu item.)
• We have assigned Winlink tactical addresses for the county EOC and each of the radio-equipped hospitals in our county. If you are not familiar with tactical addresses, please read up on the topic on the Winlink website before the drills.
Note that you need to have the password for a Winlink tactical address before you can retrieve messages sent to that tactical address. You don’t need a password to send a message to a tactical address. The password should be shared only on a need-to-know basis. It is only needed when setting up a laptop for use at a facility having a tactical address.
We recommend that you preload the tactical addresses (and password) into your Winlink Express settings on your laptop for any hospital where you might serve as an operator. Then when you arrive at the facility, it is a simple matter to enable the relevant tactical address. (Don’t forget to disable it when you leave the facility. You don’t want to be intercepting messages for a hospital when you are operating from some other location.)
Several of our ARRL officials in the Maryland-DC section have set up tactical addresses in Winlink. They have no need to share their passwords with us, since only they should be retrieving messages addressed to them. But you should be aware of these addresses in case you need to send a message to, say, the Section Emergency Manager. A list of tactical addresses is available on the MCACS website on the https://mcacs.net/training-resources/winlink/.