HHS Should Take Actions to Ensure It Has an Adequate Number of Effectively Trained Emergency Responders

Major natural disasters in the past 3 years, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, have heightened attention to the nation’s ability to respond to these types of emergencies. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for leading the public health and medical response to emergencies. HHS responded to COVID-19, in part, by deploying responders enrolled in the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS). These individuals, such as doctors and nurses, generally work outside the federal government and are federal employees used intermittently.

In 2018, HHS developed an enrollment target for NDMS of 6,290 responders, but GAO found HHS did not follow key principles of effective strategic workforce planning in developing this target. For example, HHS did not identify the critical skills and competencies needed of its NDMS workforce to meet current and future programmatic results. Specifically, HHS’s target does not take into consideration three key areas: a workforce capable of responding to (1) a nationwide event or multiple concurrent events, (2) the needs of at-risk individuals, and (3) the availability of other medical responders.