SESSION DESCRIPTION

Year after year, healthcare emergency managers complain about how they feel they are not leveraged appropriately in their organizations. In discussing this issue for many years, he has come up with numerous ways to identify and resolve some of the issues of inappropriate, or non-utilization of healthcare emergency managers by their leadership. This presentation will assist the healthcare emergency manager in discovering ways to bring their program front and center, making it more effective and enhancing organizational response operations.

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About the Presenter:

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Greg Santa Maria, DHSc, MA, MR-P, CHEP

Greg Santa Maria is the Executive Director of the South Dakota Health Care Coalition. He has nearly 30 years of experience in Emergency Medical Services and Healthcare Emergency Management and specializes in the development of complex healthcare response plans. Dr. Santa Maria has a special interest in the fusion of EMS into healthcare preparedness plans and is currently heading a task force to accomplish that goal. In his previous role as Director of Public Safety at Sanford Health, he maintained oversight of enterprise safety, security, and emergency management functions for 44 hospitals and more than 200 senior care locations in 26 states and nine countries. Mr. Santa Maria supported corporate operations in response to the Coronavirus, Ebola, H1N1, and multiple mass gathering events. Just prior to the Coronavirus outbreak, he led an incident management initiative in Kissimmee Florida in response to Hurricane Dorian, effectively evacuating 240 long-term care residents. 

Using his interest in disaster research, Dr. Santa Maria implemented an evidence-based disaster management process at Sanford Health and developed an ESF-based corporate response plan which has been successfully tested during several actual events. Dr. Santa Maria is a former NYC paramedic who has been continuously licensed and certified for over 30 years and currently serves as a non-physician subject matter expert for the American Academy of Disaster Medicine. He is also a founding member of the SD Healthcare Coalition Governing Board of which he is the recent past president. Dr. Santa Maria holds a Doctorate in Health Science and a master’s degree in Emergency and Disaster Management.