Columbus and Franklin County Hotline Subcommittee



Columbus and Franklin County Hotline Subcommittee

Meeting Notes from Feb. 4, 2009

Next meeting will be held from 2-3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1 at 910 Dublin Road (next to the water treatment plant) in the Fourth Floor Conference room.

In attendance on 2/4/09: Mike Fielding, Marquetta Pittman and Susan Geier of Columbus Public Health; Candace Jones, Sandy Elswick, Jessica Trocchio, Sima Gellman and Missy Brewer of city of Columbus; Marilee Chinnici-Zuercher from Firstlink-211; Judy Kress, Central Ohio Breathing Association; Lois Bruce, Columbus-311; and Jamie Stout, Franklin County Emergency Management & Homeland Security Agency.

The group took a tour of FIRSTLINK’s 211 Call Center, 195 N. Grant Ave., and saw a demonstration of the center’s call taking software program – how calls are answered, referred and documented.

• Between June 2007 and June 2008, there were more than 373,000 calls to 211. Nearly half of those calls were for food assistance. Additionally the call center is open 24/7; after 11 p.m. calls transferred to call taker homes (7 employees have ability to work from home).

• 211 will be transferring to the Web-based Refer system (also used in the other urban areas in Ohio). The Columbus center has agreements with the other major 211 centers in the state to seamlessly take calls should something happen locally; and a generator back-up is in the works.

Staffing & Other Call Centers

• Judy Kress, Central Ohio Breathing Center, reported that the Service Employees International Union Hall on Dublin Road has approximately 45 call stations (incoming and outgoing calls; the call center charges $30 to create a message and an hourly rate for use of the phones. It could be an option in an emergency if there was federal/state reimbursement.

• The city’s Department of Technology and 311 will work together to train the DOT helpdesk call takers so they might be used by 311 in an emergency.

• As mentioned in previous meetings, Citizen Corps, CERT and other community volunteers (Medical Reserve Corps) could also help staff phones in an emergency.

• Susan contacted Sue Young, call center supervisor for the Columbus water office, and she is interested in having her facility be part of the hotline system, if necessary. That facility at 910 Dublin Road has authorization for up to 50 call takers. Currently, there are 45 and with supervisors there are almost 60 call takers available. There are phones for at least that many call takers

• Jessica Trocchio and Missy Brewer said the 910 Dublin Road call center is part of the city’s system – like 311 – so adding those phones to the hotline can be done without difficulty.

• Susan will look to invite other agencies to attend the meetings; Sandy asked that Karen Schuman, Columbus DOT helpline supervisor be invited.

Exercise/Testing:

• There was a lengthy discussion about whether the hotline system’s capacity needed to be tested. It was agreed that hotline activation has been successfully tested in the past and that each call center (211, 311 and now 910 Dublin Road) knows the limits of its call center capacity so that testing that aspect of the system was not necessary at this time.

• Testing the communication between the Joint Information Center, which has a designated hotline coordinator position, and the call centers is the next important step. Susan will further explore two upcoming exercises where this can be tested:

▪ April 29 full-scale flood exercise involving the activation of a JIC. Hotline activation could be part of that. Susan will work the exercise design committee about this.

▪ August 10 full-scale anthrax exercise. The hotline will be simulated, but it will test the communication between the call center supervisors and the JIC.

Final Note: Kim Smith and Marquetta Pittman are longer part of the hotline subcommittee. Both are leaving their respective health departments for jobs outside of Central Ohio. We thank them for their involvement with the subcommittee and all of the hard work they have put in to making this endeavor successful.

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