Administrators can build lists of preferred providers and make them available within their region or division. These lists help you manage the size of your provider selection lists, to make it easier for users to identify providers during a specific incident.
When a Preferred Provider list is not in use, all providers in your region to which the user has access appear in the provider selection lists. This feature can be particularly important for large regions (such as large cities and statewide regions).
You can create preferred provider lists in advance of incidents and then activate them when needed. Of course, you also have the option to delete lists. This is especially helpful when you have defined many lists and want to remove those you no longer use.
Click System Settings, then on the left under Providers, click Preferred Providers. The Preferred Providers page opens.
Depending on your role, you may be able to set a default preferred provider list for your region or division.
Examples
Following are examples of ways that you can use preferred provider lists:
Geographic Location
If your region spans a large geographic area, it may make sense to create lists by geographic location. You could choose to create one list for the North, South, East, and West. Each list would include hospitals, shelters, and EMS agencies that operate in that geographic location.
Incident Type
You can create lists based on the type of incident. For example, you could create a list that includes only shelters. Or, for MCIs, you could specify designated trauma centers in your region, which would likely be the primary providers in a multiple casualty or large-scale disaster.
Following is an example of the Destination field in the Transport window. In this example, the Division applied a preferred provider list, which reduced the number of destinations in the selection list. Note that the user can select Show All to locate a destination that does not appear in the preferred list.
Overview of Process
Regional Administrators can select one preferred provider list for each type of provider: facility and mobile. This becomes each division's default setting.
Division Administrators can set up one preferred provider list for each type of provider as well. If set up, the division list overrides the regional settings for this division.
This process consists of the following high-level steps:
Add provider facilities to your region or division.
Add mobile providers to your region or division.
Build lists of preferred providers.
Select a default preferred provider list for each provider type (facility, mobile) in your:
- Region
- Division
Preferred Designation
When you add a new facility or mobile provider, you can add it to one or more preferred lists from within the add process (provided you have lists defined).
You can maintain the providers in the list from the Preferred Provider area in Preferences.