The impossible year continues: Emergency response in 2020
Interestingly enough, I don’t believe that I have a great deal of yammering to do this week; not sure if it’s just a case of mental fatigue with all that continues to transpire (or I daresay, escalate) in terms of community emergencies of virtually every and any imaginable kind. Just between COVID-19 and a typical hurricane season, it would have been an adventure of epic proportions, but perhaps a wee bit more manageable than the various forces assailing the planet. But no, what in the past had tended to be rather transient in nature has now turned towards an aggregation of conditions that rivals…certainly nothing in recent memory and perhaps not ever (the Dark Ages, maybe).
One of the positive byproducts of such a year as this is the ongoing development and promulgation of resources – I have maintained, and will continue to do so, that hospitals are generally pretty well prepared to deal with “stuff.” As I see it, the whole point of preparedness is to be able to manage circumstances (be they singular or plural) without “breaking” (by breaking, I mean a catastrophic failure of response such that folks are actually placed in unprotected risk because of the break, as opposed to facing a situation in which hospital operations would need to be altered, moved, etc.). There are no perfect organizations when it comes to this, which is as it should be—but that doesn’t mean that folks are content to rest on past experiences, but rather to build on those experiences and make improvements. The magnitude of events this year has tested the healthcare industry in ways that would only have been predicted as a hyperbolic planning exercise (this year has been a whole lot of “and then this happens”). As has been the case any number of times in the past, hospitals and other healthcare organizations have had to manage things on their own and/or with community partners as the upper levels of the response infrastructure have been less effective than might have been desired (not pointing any fingers—this is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last time that the most effective response happens at the local level).
At any rate, there are a few resources that I’ve noted over the past couple of weeks that I wanted to share. I somehow doubt that you’ll have a lot of spare time with which to review written materials, but I’m thinking that at least the links to these materials will be in a place you can “find” again. Lots of stuff here, a lot of it coming out of the response to wildfires in California, but as a primer for relocation, establishing alternative care sites, etc., there is much that is applicable to any untenable emergency condition:
- Wildfire Articles from Patient Safety Monitor Journal
- Preplanning Disaster Triage for Pediatric Hospitals: TRAIN Toolkit
- Federal Healthcare Resilience Task Force Alternate Care Site Toolkit
- California Hospital Association Wildfire Resources
As always, I hope this finds you safe and in reasonable sanity. I would like to think that we’ve got more of this behind us than in front of us, but the numbers are frowning at me, so I will just hold that hope…until next time!
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.