“The day you start preparing for the next Sturgis Rally is the day after the Rally is over.” So says Rikki Plaggemeyer, Manager Nurse, Sturgis Hospital, at a media event covering Monument Health’s Rally preparations. And she’s not wrong.
In advance of this year’s 85th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the year-round preparation not only culminates in the on-site care provided by the Nurses and Physicians at the hospitals and clinics, but also in daily organization-wide briefings. Held in some combination of in-person at Rapid City Hospital and on a mass Microsoft Teams call, the meeting can include over 100 participants and is conducted weekdays during the Rally. Various members from each of the Monument Health Urgent Cares, Same-Day Clinics, Emergency Departments and Hospitals attend, as well as representatives from law enforcement, fire departments, state and federal government agencies and organizations like Life Flight.
The point person for this all-hands-on-deck, war-room-style Rally coordination is Dustin Calhoun, Business Continuity Coordinator for Monument Health. “We begin Rally planning meetings in January. We want to make sure that our plans and procedures are known to the various entities, and their plans and procedures are known to us,” says Dustin.
In the daily briefings during the actual Rally, data is shared, such as how many patients each facility treats each day, along with how many trauma activations were required in Emergency Departments, how many beds remain open in each hospital, if any, and what staffing or supply needs a location may have. This data is compared to last year’s numbers, which then helps to inform next year’s staffing strategy and allocation.
This year, the daily Rally briefings started three days before Rally and will continue until the day after the Rally concludes—possibly beyond, as the situation requires. Then the yearly planning meetings will begin early in the new year to do it all over again. “Preparedness is key to everything,” says Dustin. “The challenge is trying to figure out how many people you can expect at each Rally and we do that through our channels—with the Department of Tourism and the city of Sturgis, for example—looking at vendor permits and how many reservations there are.”
Monument Health Physicians, Nurses and Caregivers remain committed to providing safe, high-quality care, no matter the circumstances. Each patient is treated with the same level of commitment to quality. Whether during the Rally or any other time of year, our commitment to care remains.
“Someone once told me, ‘If you have 500,000 people come to an area, that’s 500,000 different things that could happen.’ The staffing of hospitals is a big deal during events like this. The more information we have, the better for everybody,” says Dustin.
Photos and Story by Kory Lanphear