Hospitals must improve infrastructure, surge capacity, officials say

Abstract

Whether the next major catastrophe to strike the nation is a hurricane, earthquake, pandemic, or terrorist attack, any community that fails to prepare and expects the federal government to come to its rescue is “tragically wrong,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt. “There is no way that you can respond to every hometown in America at the same time,” he told an audience on April 18 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. One of the greatest lessons learned from the devastating hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast last fall, Leavitt maintained, was that “what you do in advance” of a disaster “is more important than what you do after.” Ben DeBoisblanc, medical director of the intensive care unit at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, said that when his facility lost power, including the emergency generators, water, and sewage services, and the only person practitioners could get on the phone was Wolf Blizter from CNN, “it crystallized in everyone’s mind that . . . we’re waiting around to be rescued. We’re waiting for somebody to help us. What a bad idea that is.”