After a decision has been made to activate the Tooele County Medical Reserve Corps, (MRC) other management actions will be implemented in a three way process. The activation may be declared by the governor, a county executive, or Myron E. Bateman, Director of Health. It may be a partial or full activation.  The three way process is:

1.  Activation/Notification   (Utah Information and Notification System - UNIS)
2.  Response
3. Recovery

1.  Notification (Phase I): Following a large mass casualty incident, natural or man-made disaster, or a mass disease outbreak/epidemic, the Tooele County Department Operations Center will activate; and the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) may activate. The Tooele County Health Department (TCHD ), as the lead agency for Health, will coordinate all public health needs in the community. When the current disaster/epidemic response infrastructure, including hospital response, becomes overwhelmed, the Health Officer will direct the MRC coordinator to activate the Tooele County Medical Reserve Corps to assist in the response activities already in place.Team leaders (Physician, Nurse, Emergency, and Logistics) will be notified simultaneously.   Team members will also be notified. Registered MRC members (not assigned to a Physician Team) with ID badges will have immediate access to the volunteer staging area and receive a situation briefing, training and a specific duty assignment. Before deploying, proper personal protective equipment (PPE) and communication equipment will be distributed.

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Medical Hotline - The medical hotline for the public to call following a biological terrorism attack or an emergency involving an infectious disease will also be activated. Physicians/Nurses will be utilized as medical consultants to assist the phone operators to answer medical questions, provide phone triage/assessment and direct the public to appropriate treatment areas. The medical consultants will be in direct contact with the Health Officer in the Emergency Operations Center. This link is essential to better communicate needs and respond to the situation. Medical hotline physicians will be given information about the biological agent or infectious disease involved, treatment locations and triage instructions. These physicians will need to make assessments and refer people based on the information from the Health Officer and information given by the callers.

Alternate Sites of Care - Following a large-scale disaster that exceeds the community’s current hospital capacity, County Emergency management will open critical care collection point sites. These sites will be utilized to care for non-critical patients allowing the hospitals to treat the critically ill. Physicians working in an Alternate Site of Care will provide for the healthcare needs of the patients, as well as other healthcare professionals and support staff. These sites will act as either an in-patient facility treating patients affected by the disaster or an out-patient facility providing routine medical care for those not directly affected by the disaster.

d. Triage / First Aid Site:
Triage/First aid sites have the potential to be utilized in various scenarios. Following a large, mass casualty disaster, the MRC might assist EMS in opening First Aid Sites to treat the walking wounded.  Non - medical volunteers are crucial for the effectiveness of these first aid sites.  They will play a vital role  to assist community residents as well as medical personnel. Physicians/Nurses at these sites will need to perform health assessments to determine severity of injuries and various first aid tasks, including CPR. Following an infectious disease outbreak, natural or terrorism related, patient assessment sites will be established to assess and refer patients coming to public collection points for treatment. After initial assessment, if further medical assessment is required, patients will be sent to the medical triage area to be evaluated by a physician. The physician will assess and refer patients to the appropriate treatment location as directed by ESF-8.