Washakie County LEPC learns full benefits of emPOWER Program

WORLAND – During their Zoom meeting on Thursday, Jan. 20, the Washakie County Local Emergency Planning Committee (LEPC) received information on the benefits of the emPOWER Program by Sheryl Roub with the Wyoming Department of Health.

Roub explained what the program is and what it does, as well as why it is important to have in a crisis.

According to a presentation provided by Roub, the Health and Human Services (HHS) emPOWER Program is a mission-critical partnership between the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The HHS emPOWER Program provides federal data, mapping and artificial intelligence tools, as well as training and resources, to help communities nationwide protect the health of at-risk Medicare beneficiaries – including 4.4 million individuals who live independently and rely on electricity-dependent durable medical and assistive equipment and devices, and or essential health care services.

According to empowermap.hhs.gov, the HHS emPOWER Map is updated monthly and displays the total number of at-risk electricity-dependent Medicare beneficiaries in a geographic area, as well as near real-time natural hazard data.

According to the website, users can also access near real-time natural hazard data layers to anticipate and address the needs of any at-risk community members in emergencies.

During the presentation at the LEPC meeting, it was

stated that, community partners were initially only able to access de-identified aggregated data on Medicare electricity-dependent at-risk population data, down to the zip code. In 2017, the HHS emPOWER Representational State Transfer (REST) Service was launched to allow any user the ability to consume this data layer in their own geospatial information systems (GIS) or applications so they could compare, analyze, and visualize this de-identified Medicare data along with their other community resource and asset data layers to better inform emergency preparedness, response, recovery and community mitigation decision-making and actions prior to, during and after an incident, emergency or disaster.

Over Thanksgiving in 2019, Goshen County faced back-to-back severe blizzards with high winds up to 60 mph and projected prolonged freezing conditions. Roads and houses were snowed in, and the rural power cooperative projected power outages of up to 30 hours or more. Goshen County partnered with the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) to officially request the restricted HHS emPOWER Emergency Response Outreach Individual Dataset (emPOWER Response Outreach Dataset) to support numerous multi-agency coordinated response outreach activities to at-risk individuals directly impacted by the severe storms and hazardous conditions.

According to Roub’s presentation, Goshen County received the data and worked rapidly to compare it against other county information to develop a targeted plan and prioritization for conducting outreach activities to impacted at-risk individuals. Leveraging local electric cooperative and company information, Goshen County compared the addresses in the emPOWER database against the areas that were projected to have prolonged power outages and required prioritized outreach activities. The Goshen County Emergency Management coordinator partnered with the sheriff’s office to identify areas where at-risk individuals resided in areas affected by the power outage, then coordinated with the sheriff’s office to perform wellness checks on those individuals.

WDH and Goshen County quickly partnered with multiple agencies and identified innovative ways to leverage their resources to reach at-risk individuals amidst power outages and severe blizzards affecting the community.

Moving forward, WDH and Goshen County plan to formalize a new standard operating procedure for requesting and operationalizing emPOWER data. Wyoming Department of Health will be in charge of training emergency managers and public health responders around the state on how to access and use emPOWER data. Goshen County also plans to continue their preparedness collaborations with local Durable Medical Equipment (DME) and oxygen suppliers to better anticipate and respond to the needs of their at-risk population, and engage rural electricity cooperatives to inform power restoration prioritization for electricity-dependent individuals in future incidents, emergencies, or disasters.

OTHER BUSINESS

Other business from the LEPC Meeting included:

•Washakie County Sheriff Steve Rakness gave an update on the threatening graffiti that was found in a Worland High School boys bathroom on Jan. 7. No further evidence was found, and no other threat was indicated. Rakness added that the Safe2Tell Wyoming lines usually have rumors as of who did it, following these types of things, but that this time there hasn’t been any.

•Phillip Franklin with Cody Regional Health discussed the possibility of getting a second ambulance to float between Basin and Worland. The ambulance crew would drive back and forth between the towns from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

•Neighbors informed that the state is running low on rapid-result COVID tests. She recommends that if one is in need of testing, they should call their provider to figure out the best course of action, as she cannot speak for providers and doesn’t know if they are running low or not. Neighbors advised that the state was trying to increase the number of tests at a central level. She added that a lot of pharmacies have over-the-counter tests. She reminded that the state offers free testing through Vault Health, and you can order more free tests from the Federal government as well. Tests can be ordered through the Wyoming Department of Health website. Neighbors encourages those who are looking to be tested to first call their doctor before assuming they’re running low on tests, as every day there’s new information coming out.

•Neighbors added that last week’s statewide, active COVID case numbers were the highest they’ve been since the beginning of the pandemic.