James L. Paturas, Deputy Director, Deborah Smith, Manager of Clinical Services, Yale New Haven Health Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response, Stewart Smith, CEO, Emergency Preparedness and Response International and Joseph Albanese, Clinical Professor, Yale University School of Medicine
Abstract
Healthcare organisations are a critical part of a community’s resilience and play a prominent role as the backbone of medical response to natural and manmade disasters. The importance of healthcare organisations, in particular hospitals, to remain operational extends beyond the necessity to sustain uninterrupted medical services for the community, in the aftermath of a large-scale disaster. Hospitals are viewed as safe havens where affected individuals go for shelter, food, water and psychosocial assistance, as well as to obtain information about missing family members or learn of impending dangers related to the incident. The ability of hospitals to respond effectively to high-consequence incidents producing a massive arrival of patients that disrupt daily operations requires surge capacity and capability. The activation of hospital emergency support functions provides an approach by which hospitals manage a short-term shortfall of hospital personnel through the reallocation of hospital employees, thereby obviating the reliance on external qualified volunteers for surge capacity and capability. Recent revisions to the Joint Commission’s hospital emergency preparedness standard have impelled healthcare facilities to participate actively in communitywide planning, rather than confining planning exclusively to a single healthcare facility, in order to harmonise disaster management strategies and effectively coordinate the allocation of community resources and expertise across all local response agencies.
Keywords
hospital emergency support functions, surge capacity and capability, community resilience, disaster planning
James Paturas is the Deputy Director for the Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response (YNHCEPDR). He also serves as Director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response and the Connecticut Center of Excellence for Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response at Yale New Haven Health System.
Deborah Smith is the Manager of Clinical Services at YNH-CEPDR. She provides subject matter expertise for disaster-related course development and training programmes. She is the lead supervisory nurse of the CT-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, regularly deploying to disasters throughout the USA. In addition, she represents the State of Connecticut’s Department of Public Health as the Statewide Hospital Pandemic Influenza Coordinator, providing guidance for the state’s acute care hospitals during the recent novel H1N1 outbreak.
Stewart Smith is the Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Emergency Preparedness and Response International, LLC. He is a retired navy commander and medical service corps officer with assignments that include Chief of the Joint Regional Medical Plans and Operations Division for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Northern Command, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs; The Joint Staff, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Medical Plans and Policy.
Joseph Albanese is a radiation biologist and currently serves as the Radiation Biodosimetrist for YNH-CEPDR and the State of Connecticut. Dr Albanese is an experienced research investigator and is a clinical professor in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology and Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine.
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