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A Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) is a group of medical and support personnel designed to provide emergency medical care during a disaster or other unusual event.
DMATs deploy to disaster sites with adequate supplies and equipment to support themselves for a period of 72 hours while providing medical care at a fixed or temporary medical site. The may provide primary primary health care and/or augment overload3ed local health care staff. DMATs are designed to be a rapid-response element to supplement local medical care until other Federal or contract resources can be mobilized, or the situation resolved.
Each DMAT deployable unit consists of approximately 35 individuals; however, teams may consist of more than three times this number to provide some redundancy for each job role. This insures that an adequate number of personnel are available at the time of deployment. The team is composed of medical professionals and support staff organized, trained, and prepared to activate as a unit.
DMAT CA-9 is a Level One team. DMATs are categorized according in four readiness levels:
| Level One: |
DMATs that are fully deployable within 8 hours of notification and are self-sufficient for 72 hours. They are deployed with standardized equipment and supply sets to treat up to 250 patients per day.
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| Level Two: |
DMATs that lack enough equipment to make them self-sufficient but are able to deploy and replace a Level One team utilizing and supplementing their equipment which is left on site. |
| Level Three: |
DMATs that have local response capability only. |
| Level Four: |
DMATs with a Memorandum of Understanding executed in some stage of development but have no response capability. |
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