Baker to Vegas: Leveraging Pulsara to Manage a Planned Event

Although they have the advantage of prior awareness and preparation, large-scale planned events pose unique challenges for emergency management teams. High patient volume, dispersed resources, and disjointed communication can make providing medical service for major events particularly difficult.

Now imagine that your event has over 10,000 attendees spread across a 120-mile road through Death Valley, the hottest national park in the United States. These are the intimidating conditions faced by the medical staff of Baker to Vegas. In this massive annual law enforcement relay race, teams of officers compete for the Challenge Cup Trophy.

What started as a challenge between LA police officers Chuck Foote and Larry Moore in the late 1970s has evolved into a yearly footrace with about 7,000 participating officers. The runners each conquer a 6-10 mile stretch of Highway 127 (a.k.a. Death Valley Road) before passing their baton to a teammate.

According to Dr. Troy Pennington, “It's designed to encourage physical fitness and camaraderie in the law enforcement community.” Dr. Pennington is currently the EMS fellowship director at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in San Bernardino County and serves as the Medical Director for Baker to Vegas. “Racers come from all over the world as far as Australia to compete. It's not for cash or prizes, it's pride. Pride for the badge and trying to serve fellow man.” 

A Medical Management Challenge

Each year, Dr. Pennington oversees a planned large-scale event with thousands of potential patients dispersed across Death Valley’s harsh environment. To pull it off, he requires a large and coordinated medical team. The Baker to Vegas medical team consists entirely of volunteers with almost 200 personnel staged at 20 different first aid stations throughout the race. Nurses, paramedics, doctors, PAs, and firefighters volunteer their time to provide care for this massive event every year. 

These first aid stages are set up about every 6 to 10 miles. “One of our huge challenges is that in some stages of this event, we're more than 80 miles from the nearest hospital,” said Dr. Pennington. “On the California side of the event, we're generally running around 12 ambulances and three helicopters with a similar contingent on the Nevada side.”

Even with a large team and prepared resources, managing an event this vast has significant organizational challenges. According to Dr. Pennington, “The thing that's been difficult for me as the medical director is having that situational awareness: trying to know how many active patients I have at different stages of the race at any given moment. How many of those patients are en route to the hospital? How do we essentially account for and how do we shift all of our resources and put them in the appropriate area? We've never had that visibility before.” 

Historically, participating runners would write important identification and medical information on their bib before beginning the race so medical responders could properly document and treat collapsed patients. Between runners leaving their bibs blank and poor patient tracking capability, this management solution left the Baker to Vegas medical team in the dark far too often. “When I started with the event in 2017, we were on paper. We put information on the back of the runner's bib and used good old-fashioned triage tags if we had a big event. We've gone from what I consider the eight-track tape of technology to the digital age.” 

With 7,000 potential patients spread over 120 miles, how do you maintain situational awareness during such a big event? According to Dr. Pennington, you use Pulsara. 

Awareness Made Easy

Over the past few years, the Baker to Vegas team has been transitioning from paper to Pulsara. Using Pulsara’s communication platform and scannable barcode wristbands, responders can identify, triage, and transport patients more efficiently. Baker to Vegas also partnered with Verizon, which donated tablets and phones to the event. The devices allow them to communicate with every staff member throughout the race. 

 “We're working with the Pulsara team on creating a runner database so that we have the medical information of all of the runners ahead of the event,” said Dr. Pennington. “We've essentially created that patient channel before everything starts so that when we scan that wristband, we immediately have some background information on that runner, and then we can add to that as we create that communication line.” Each runner wears a wristband that corresponds to their pre-documented information in Pulsara. As soon as the code is scanned with a mobile device, the patient is logged and ready for treatment.

In addition to improving workflows for first-contact documentation, Pulsara also creates situational awareness for Dr. Pennington and his team. They can easily monitor and track patient activity and transportation using their own devices. “At any given moment, I can see how many patients I have along the course of the race. I can see how many greens, how many yellows, how many reds, who's en route to the hospital, who's arrived at the hospital. I can drill down to specific patient information. I can see their EKG or a photograph. It's provided us a new level of visibility on the race that we've never had before.” 

Even with thousands of potential patients across over 100 miles of highway, the Baker to Vegas medical team is as prepared as possible to respond.

Simple and Scalable

What’s most impressive about Baker to Vegas’s transition to Pulsara is the efficiency of their training and implementation. Dr. Pennington and his team meet and coordinate in just one brief session. With the race beginning on the very next day, Pennington and two Pulsara team members were able to “train all of our medical providers on how to use the app, how to create an incident, and how to manage patients in a very brief period of time. We were able to get up and running on the event very, very quickly. Literally the following day, we are able to transition that into a live event.” With an easy-to-learn platform like Pulsara, Baker to Vegas can bring on any number of new medical staff and get them up to speed quickly.

Equipped with barcode wristbands, standard mobile devices, and Pulsara, the Baker to Vegas medical team is coordinated and prepared to support the runners at every point of the race. With dispatch and event management running smoothly, participating law enforcement can focus on the challenge at hand: 120 miles of Death Valley Road.

The 2025 Baker to Vegas race will take place on April 5th and 6th. To learn more about the event, click here!

To hear more from Dr. Pennington on the process of preparing for Baker to Vegas, watch the webinar Streamlining Crisis Response: A Deep Dive into MCIs and Large Events.