Emergency Management

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina have forever changed how America thinks of emergency management. Hospitals are creating strategic plans to prepare for disasters and to handle the surge of patients that are common in these events.

In this issue, you will read about a county that has regionalized their emergency preparedness plans, how Louisiana was in the process of creating emergency management plans when Hurricane Katrina occurred and why there should be standardized performance measures for emergency management.

Best Practices
Preparing for a Disaster through a Regionalized Approach

For emergency management professionals at hospitals across the country, the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001, were an epic reminder of the need for disaster preparedness. Although some hospitals had previously relegated emergency preparedness to the back burner, the attacks quickly renewed the drive for emergency planning and coordination. In Louisiana, hospitals began working together in 2002 to develop a regionalized infrastructure. The goal was to think and function regionally in the wake of a disaster. Little did hospital officials know how soon they would need to implement those plans. While Louisiana’s regionalization system did not avert the unprecedented disaster that unfolded during Hurricane Katrina, emergency experts in the state and others nationwide have learned from it and ultimately call the regionalized response a success. We spoke with Dr. Erin Downey and Mr. Kerry Jeanice about a regionalized approach to emergency management.

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Innovations
Emergency Preparedness: It Takes a Village

Major disasters such as an infectious disease outbreak or terrorist attack are likely to overwhelm the capacity of any one emergency department to respond. Such scenarios require a coordinated response among a community's hospitals, emergency medical service providers, and other health care leaders. In 2005, Seattle's King County Healthcare Coalition was formed to build such relationships and develop the infrastructure needed to respond to disasters. We spoke to Ms. Chris Martin, administrative director of emergency services at Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, a founding member of the coalition, to learn about the hospital's experience.

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Perspectives
Managing Without Measuring: Why Healthcare Emergency Management Needs Performance Measures

What do we truly know about how we perform before, during and after emergencies? What assumptions are we making about the quality of our response? Will all of our resources and training be enough? Have we tested ourselves to be sure that we can deliver the best emergency care when it matters most? Dr. Nicholas Cagliuso of the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System sees these as issues that loom large and discusses the importance of the development of uniform, nationwide health care emergency preparedness performance measures.

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In the News

Urgent Matters Launches New Website
Urgent Matters has launched a new website. You will find new sections with updated information, such as ‘in the news’ and the ‘Urgent Matters spotlight’. Visit us soon at www.urgentmatters.org!

South Florida Hospitals get a Grant to Improve Disaster Preparedness
Broward Health has received a grant from the state Human and Health Services Office to enable Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties to implement a hospital incident management system. This will enable the redistribution of personnel, facilities, equipment and supplies in the event of a disaster.

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New Reports

ED Wait Times Getting Longer
A recent study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School found that patients seeking urgent care in emergency departments are waiting longer than in the 1990s. This particularly applies to patients with heart attacks, who waited 50 minutes or more before seeing at physician in 2004.

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