Emergency Preparedness Plan/Policy

[normandie]

Does anyone have a plan or policy on a Emergency Preparedness Plan for "Water Failure or Contamination"?
Do you have an agreement with another local hospital or outsourced sterilization company? How about firetruck/tanker trucks brought in? What would you do in this situation or have you ever been in this type if situation before and what did you learn by it. Please share any information with me that you can. I would certainly appreciate your help. Thanks so much

[chipmoore]

Good question. I was hoping you would get other replies but since you haven’t, here’s some thoughts. Fellow CS Managers in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City Iowa might have some insights from their flood experiences last June. Mercy in CR had their whole department under water, equipment no longer usable. U of Iowa MC had their steam turned off for days.
For the sake of clarity, what are the possible scenarios in emergency preparedness planning?
Water Failure: outages in terms of minutes to a department (sterilizers/cart washer/washer disinfectors need water, rinse sinks) probably won’t make much difference except if they were in mid cycle. Reprocess the load likely solution. Outages of hours would put a crimp in your productivity for the day. There are no water tanks truck large enough to make a difference, very large hourly consumption. Once the water is back running, probably need to verify they are running OK just like a major repair.
Contamination: steam generation should take care of bugs in the supply water. What kind of rinse water is used for your washers? Treated final rinse probably OK, house water, not.
Here’s hoping you get other input. The above just scratches the surfaces.
Chip Moore
Rochester, NY
Retired but involved

[normandie]

Chip, thanks so much for writing back. One question that still needs to be answered is "In these scenario's, was an outsourced sterilization company available to take and clean and process the trays for the next days use and or does any hospital have a plan or contract with another hospital to help for emergency reprocessing"? Or, did the OR/hospital have to shut down?
Thanks, Normandie

[iowa gal]

Here at the U of Iowa we did have many issues during the flood of 08. On the issue of water we have a water tower in front of the hospital that is estimated to have a two or three day supply. If the water failure was expected to last longer then tanker trucks were going to be brought in to refill the tower.
I do not know of any outsourced sterilization company anywhere near here. I think that you would have to go to a large city to find one. During the flood of 93 Des Moines got flooded and we did help one of their hospitals by sterilizing items for them. There have been other times where we have helped other hospitals or needed their help.
I would suggest that you get to know other CS managers/directors in your area through any CS organizations that you might have access to. It helps to know people that can help during a crisis situation.
Because of the loss of steam we shut down the ORs for a few hours. Mercy hospital in Cedar Rapids did have to shut down the hospital and transfer patients because they were taking in water. We here at UIHC and at St Lukes in Cedar Rapids temoporary steam boilers were brought in. We also have emergency steam boilers at our hospital but they were not big enough to carry the load. We are in the process of getting more boilers online so hopefully we will not have to shut down the ORs again.

[chipmoore]

For the big picture in preparing for emergency situations, ck out
http://www.jointcommission.org/NR/rdonlyres/DCA586BD-1915-49AD-AC6E-C88F6AEA706D/0/HAP_EM.pdf
http://www.jointcommission.org/NR/rdonlyres/FE29E7D3-22AA-4DEB-94B2-5E8D507F92D1/0/planning_guide.pdf

For the 1st one, the reference is EM.02.02.09
Chip Moore
Rochester, NY
Retired but involved

[normandie]

Thank you Chipmore for responding and sending me information from the Joint Commission. I just printed it out so I haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but I just wanted to thank you for remembering my e-mail questions and taking the time to respond.

Respectfully,
Normandie