Most hospitals are prepared for disasters
More than 76 percent of hospitals participating in the National Hospital Preparedness Program met 90 percent or more of all program measures for all-hazards preparedness in 2009, according to a report released today by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.
“From Hospitals to Healthcare Coalitions: Transforming Health Preparedness and Response in Our Communities,” the program’s first state-by-state report, identifies the advances that states have made in preparing hospitals for all types of disasters. The report also discusses the next steps the program will take to boost community resilience.
HHS established the HPP in 2002 as the National Bioterrorism Hospital Preparedness Program to enhance hospitals’ ability to respond to a biological attack by increasing stockpiles of equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals that would not have been purchased by financially strained institutions without the program. The program has since evolved to support preparedness for all hazards.
In July 2010, states, territories and large metropolitan areas received HPP grants totaling $390.5 million to help hospitals and other healthcare organizations strengthen their medical surge capability. HPP funding focuses on enhancing planning, increasing integration between public and private sector medical planning and assets and improving infrastructure.
[See also: $390.5M in grants will help states strengthen medical surge capability.]
All states, eight U.S. territories and four large metropolitan areas participate in the cooperative agreement grant program, which provides federal funds, technical assistance and guidelines for hospital preparedness. Of the more than 6,300 hospitals across the nation, more than 85 percent take advantage of the program.
Hospitals meeting preparedness performance measures have dedicated redundant, interoperable systems in place to communicate between hospitals, public health agencies and emergency managers. These hospitals can report the number of available beds to a state, territory or city emergency operations center within 60 minutes of a request during a disaster.
These hospitals also have plans to handle a surge in demand for hospital services during a disaster, as well as plans for hospital evacuation, sheltering patients and staff in place during a disaster, and responding to mass fatalities.
Hospitals must demonstrate their response capability during emergency exercises, including statewide or regional exercises or actual incidents. The hospitals develop improvement plans based on after-action reports from these events. During a disaster, they use the incident command system and have adopted the National Incident Management System through the hospital organization. These systems standardize response terminology and command-and-control structure across the emergency response.
To meet some of these performance measures and enhance the response capability, states, territories, cities and participating hospitals also use HPP funding to purchase emergency equipment, such as mobile medical units and back-up generators.
The report suggests that, as an increasing number of hospitals meet performance measurements, participants also focus on building coalitions in communities so that hospitals, government agencies, nongovernment organizations, businesses and community residents work as a team to prepare for and respond to disasters. The report recommends that these coalitions involve all populations in communities, including children, pregnant women, the elderly and those who are vulnerable in other ways.
