Are hospitals and care facilities in the U.S. really prepared?
The Cost of Being Prepared for Disasters
From 1992 to 2021, Congress appropriated $381 billion to cover costs associated with disaster relief. The Congressional Budget Office reports that over the course of the past 30 years, FEMA has spent $347 billion from the Disaster Relief Fund in response to natural disasters, the largest category of spending, which includes hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes, and more. (The second largest category of spending was in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.)
The Unrecoupable Cost of Disasters
We witnessed with horror the devastation of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma in 2005. Key statistics show that about 12,000 caregivers and patients were evacuated from 25 hospitals after the storm.
The daily dose of news feeds narrating the confusion, disorganization, suffering, and loss of life and property were painful to watch. The chaos proved evidence of a massive lack of preparation on the part of government entities and the health care industry. Katrina was not the largest or destructive storm in American history, but it cost the most lives (1,800+) and the most money ($160+ billion). For all of the federal government’s monetary planning to provide disaster relief, money cannot replace human life. A bigger emphasis should be placed on what happens before a disaster.
Life-saving decisions can only be as strong as the information provided.
Hurricane season in the U.S. runs from June 1st through November 30th of each year. After all we have learned as a nation since Katrina, are our hospitals ready for large-scale weather and other emergency events this season — almost 20 years later?
Developing plans for power outages, floods, and structure issues are key. In most cases, weather events are tracked, so hospital managers have ample time to think ahead, before power outages occur. The first priority in dealing with any natural disaster should be to implement outstanding communication tools that will help hospital staff obtain the latest and best information at any given moment. Life-saving decisions can only be as strong as the information provided. Understanding exactly how many people a hospital is dealing with (patients and staff), where they are located, and how and where everyone may need to be moved will determine the overall outcome: life or death.
Aionex Nurse Call Systems provide Real-Time Information at a Glance
When hospitals vs hurricanes and other disasters, it's crucial to be ready before a crisis. The first step is to make sure a system is in place that can provide details in seconds across all units in a hospital, nursing home, or rehab center:
Exact locations of staff members
Total number of patients in hospital beds
Total number of patients on each unit
Total number of empty beds available
Real-Time Communications with Enterprise Hospitals
In the aftermath of Katrina, hospitals and nursing homes were forced to move patients to completely different locations, yet they were unable to determine ahead of time which facilities were available and the exact number of units and beds that were ready. Aionex can provide the tools that will integrate with existing hospital enterprises in emergency situations — and during non-emergencies. Centralized systems allow hospitals to do more with less when dealing with natural disasters, but they also provide life-saving, time-saving services during other events, like temporary or long-term labor shortages.
Hospital disaster preparedness is not a choice — it is a duty.
Aionex is not just a Nurse Call System; it is a System for Life that can be implemented within one hospital’s facilities and/or across completely separate centralized clinical systems in other enterprise hospitals located across many miles.
What has your hospital or health-care enterprise appropriated and implemented for disaster planning and chaos prevention?
Gambling with the monetary cost of not being as prepared as possible is placing patients’ lives at risk at a cost that is beyond calculable.
Call Aionex today to discuss all preparedness options we can provide to hospitals, long-term care, and rehab facilities from small to large.
Being prepared is not only available, flexible, affordable -- it is urgent, crucial, and essential.
Contact us for more information,
or to schedule an in-person tour of Aionex working systems.
We’re big enough to work with any medical facility,
and small enough to communicate with each of our clients
on a personal level for emergency planning.
615.851.4477
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