Preparations Necessary for Health Care Facilities, Don’t Just Take our Word for it

We’ve been talking about health care facility preparedness for quite a while. But recently, others are standing up and taking notice. We want our clients, and prospective clients, to have the most up-to-date and accurate information possible, so we’ve rounded up some of those recent publications.

 

 

 

 

Financial damage may be what grabs people’s attention when discussing emergency preparedness. While it’s too soon to know the financial toll of Hurricane Irma and the early estimates of Harvey are over $100 billion, we can easily see how these numbers grab the attention of the healthcare industry. Texas Medical Center spent big money on a system of floodgates after Tropical Storm Allison. It paid off during Hurricane Harvey.

 

 

Beyond financial repercussions is the reputation each health care facility has. Bad press can destroy a health care facility, and people are quick to file lawsuits when they feel they were wronged. Following Hurricane Katrina, over 200 lawsuits were filed, damaging reputations in a way that isn’t easily fixed. Recommendations in this piece include developing and nurturing a geographically diverse network, identifying alternate care sites in case evacuations are necessary and planning for staffing issues.

 

 

Our take: The overarching theme throughout this report from PWC is that planning must occur before hurricane season begins. We’d argue that means the day the 2017 season ends, we start planning for the 2018 season.

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve all heard the advice regarding evacuating in response to hurricanes, “Run from water, hide from wind,” but what about when you can’t do either on your own? Dr. Kathryn Hyer, director of the Florida Policy Exchange Center on Aging at the University of South Florida recently conducted a study that indicates nursing homes should “shelter in place” instead of evacuating prematurely.

 

 

After looking at hurricanes as far back as Katrina, Rita, and Ike, Hyer and her team broke down the nursing homes into groups that evacuated and those that stayed where they were before the storm hit. Admitting that the death rates increased regardless of location due to the stress associated with a hurricane, Hyer discovered that the death rates and hospitalization for those who evacuated were higher than for those that stayed.

 

 

Our take: This doesn’t change the fact that a health care facility needs an evacuation plan. An orderly, calm evacuation that takes place before the storm is going to be easier on residents than one in the dark of night with hurricane force winds and flooding. But we know that not everyone needs to evacuate every time, so there needs to be a plan.

 

 

 

It’s hard to ignore the topic with the looming compliance deadline less than a month away. Ready to take action?