For CEOs, emergency management lessons learned from the September 11 terrorist attacks remain relevant.
In the eight years since that infamous day, the United States has seen other disasters, and the same lessons seem to come up over and over again—which makes the September 11 anniversary a good opportunity to review the following emergency planning concerns:
Communication failures: During the attacks in New York City, so many people went on their mobile phones that the city's cell network became overloaded and slowed down. Meanwhile, incident commanders had trouble contacting emergency responders at the World Trade Center.
Such problems continue to haunt hospitals caught in the midst of emergency response. Just last month, an extensive New York Times article illustrated how healthcare workers at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans were isolated from the outside world after Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005, in part because communication ability was limited.
It bears repeating that redundant communication options must exist in hospital emergency operation plans that reach beyond telephones and two-way radios. Recently, we've seen how some hospitals use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to keep employees and the public abreast of emergency response activities. With The Joint Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on social media sites, can hospitals afford to ignore that medium?
Flexible emergency responses: After the World Trade Center was attacked, hospitals throughout the Northeast prepared for surges of victims. Such demands were overestimated, as many victims never made it to triage, proving that ERs must have the ability to ebb and flow with the particulars of a disaster.
Earlier this year, hospitals in New York City again braced for the worst after a US Airways jet made a splashdown in the Hudson River. Luckily, all of the passengers survived and there were relatively few injuries, so hospitals had to scale back their responses.
The incident was a good example of how hospitals must ramp up emergency response efforts when they receive word of a problem, but don't know the extent of it, Richard Morrow, administrative director of safety at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Manhattan, said at the time of the incident during an interview with HCPro's Hospital Safety Center.
It's more effective to activate the incident command center at full throttle—and then pull back efforts once you've assessed the situation—than to react moderately, Morrow said.
More recently, the H1N1 swine flu pandemic points to this same principle, as on a given day, any ER could find itself suddenly inundated should a spike in swine flu cases occur in a community.
Escalating scenarios: Emergencies often experience further complications. The September 11 demonstrates this point, as first the World Trade Center towers were attacked, U.S. flights were grounded, the towers collapsed, and part of New York City was evacuated. Each escalation potentially worsened emergency response efforts at hospitals.
Since 2001, The Joint Commission has heavily emphasized that hospitals must anticipate an escalating series of events during a catastrophe, a concept that also came true during Katrina.