In the last 25 years, Pennsylvania alone has had 8 major disaster declarations by FEMA — or one event every three years.
When a hospital or healthcare facility suffers a loss of power, community trust is compromised and consequences can be disastrous.
• Nursing home resident mortality rates skyrocketed 218% after Hurricane Gustav in 2008 in Louisiana.
• During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the backup power system failed at one of New York City’s premier medical centers, forcing evacuation of all 215 patients.
• Power outages during Katrina left Memorial Medical Center without power and inside temperatures of over 100 degrees, forcing a doctor and nurses to hasten death for critically ill patients.
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In fact, by adding a 1-megawatt CHP system, a hospital can save up to $700,000 annually through increased efficiency.
Also known as cogeneration, CHP generates electricity from an on-site engine and heats and cools the hospital or medical facility using waste heat from the engine. CHP systems vary depending on the size of the hospital and its needs, but the reliability, efficiency and sustainability of the system is constant, because the system does not rely on the traditional power grid. When the grid does go down, hospitals with CHP serve as dependable islands of power, ensuring critical operations are uninterrupted and offering refuge for emergency workers, displaced people, and patients evacuated from medical facilities that lack power.
Discussions — and decisions — about CHP purchases belong in the C-suite, because the discussions revolve not just around technology, but around the health system’s vision and mission and the ways that CHP will help the health system achieve its strategic goals and objectives.
Enhances operations
A Combined Heat & Power (CHP) system enhances a hospital or medical facility’s operations by:
• Ensuring that in a disaster, the hospital still will have the power and heating or cooling it needs to ensure continuous patient care and uninterrupted use of important medical
Hurricane Sandy inflicted unprecedented damage to NYU Langone Medical Center. However, with the renovations and upgrades made to the NYU healthcare system in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, their inpatient and outpatient volumes have rebounded, resulting in an increased
Health care today strives to delineate their core values in the public eye with clear integrity and with intent to provide health care as stated in their mission, vision, and value statements. These statements are the daily endeavor health care organizations labor over consistently. In Miami, FL there is a state of the arts health care organization know as Jackson Health System. They are a massive health care organization comprised of three major hospitals, the only stand alone level one trauma center in the county, a level three neonatal intensive care unit, a transplant center, multiple specialty centers, and primary health care clinics to name just a few of the wealth in services available to the community. If I could sum up their mission, vision, and values in just a few words it would be the the health care system provider that reaches to provide the highest standard of excellence in health care. As an emergency room nurse working for this organization I will describe my unit’s mission, how nursing strengthen the organization’s mission and vision, the structure of the emergency room department, the centralized model they use, and some of the pros and cons to the use of a centralized model in the emergency room setting. I will explain key theories of how the organization is a social system, the benefits, risks, and definition of shared governance, and how their mission, vision, and values provide strategic direction to everyone involved in it’s operations.
The setting for this disaster plan is a primary care clinic, providing services to 20-30 patients a day and has 20 staff members. The
Each year between 210,000 and 440,000 patients go to the hospital for care suffers some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death (Allen). Knowing that so many patients go into a hospital and never leave due to mistakes made by a physician or nurse is extremely sickening. Physician and nurses have to sometimes slow down and double or even triple check information that have entered into patients chart or doses they are about to administer to an patient. I know it is hard sometimes to slow down because there are so many patients that needed to be attended to at any given moment. Hospitals now are becoming very crowded and sometimes the patients are in pain as well as inpatient. Nurses and physician are trying to do their best to ensure that they touch bases with
I was surprised to see how beautiful the hospitals are. They look gothic and solid. The mental institutions look really expensive to build and the size is incredible. Even though the hospitals housed many patients, they were forgotten because patients were out of society's view. They did not live in the larger society. It is shocking that some psychiatrists think they were helping patients get care. Some of the psychiatrist' attempts were barbaric. Patients were even being mistreated by some hospital staff. Watching the documentary, I was surprised because the patients' experiences at the mental hospitals were traumatic. Additionally, something that stood out to me was that drugs may have played a role in keeping mental institutions open.
Hospitals are organizations, which involve constant movement of people hence suitable structures, planning, and facilities should be put to ensure adequate delivery of services. Hospital structures should allow adequate space for expansion. They should be placed where there are many people and in places where they are easily accessible. Hospitals provide different healthcare facilities, inpatient services and outpatient services; this requires proper planning and appropriate buildings to manage different patients.
Living in Chicago, which is known as Windy City, a natural disaster that would impact our community would be a power outage. Last year our community experienced several power outages due to strong winds. According to Nies & McEwen (2015), nurses aside of their personal duty of developing a disaster plan for home and family, they have a duty towards their community where they can assist by developing plans for disaster prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery for the facilities where they work or communities where they live. Collaborating with other health and social representatives, they can assist in all aspects of emergencies and disasters that can occur. Nurses can assist the community in power outage by providing teaching materials
Full waiting rooms, long wait times, inefficient use of supplies and budgets, needless stress and high mortality rate is feedback from the external environment that the hospitals are not meeting the needs of their stakeholders, or fitting in
As hospitals continue to experience some financial difficulties, there is a growing concern that institutions will compromise quality care to ensure survival. Hospitals wrestle with strategies to counter the effects spawned by revenue loss and the possible rippling effects upon the surrounding communities.
“Because hospital staff members working under time constraints and heavy workloads could potentially be at high risk of misinterpreting or delivering inaccurate information” (Patterson, 2015, p. 153), it is important to give clear information in a timely manner. “Not only will hospitals in the heart of the disaster have to deal with a mass influx of patients, they will also find themselves inundated with family members and volunteers, who present their own challenges” (Meyers, 2006, p. 19). As nurse leaders, we need to make certain that our employees have a disaster plan of their own so they can focus on the patient care.
With the possibility of various disasters taking place, hospitals should be prepared for any scenario. Hospital preparedness should include educating and training staff as well as developing and implementing a disaster response plan. While a disaster response plan will specifically address how the hospital can prepare and respond to a disaster, collaboration with the community and outside entities should also be addressed. Below is a discussion on what should be considered when developing and implementing such a plan.
In today’s world, hospitals are seeing an influx of patients now more than ever. These rising numbers are primarily due to the fact that patients have more access to healthcare and are therefore living longer, but also sicker. This increase in patient population is a huge concern for hospitals as the threat of limited space is often a reality. According to statistics released by the Healthcare Financial Management Association, with rapid growth of the healthcare industry, healthcare production from 2010 to 2020 will increase from $1.8 trillion to $3.1 trillion, growing by over 70%; the increase of patients will significantly impact the availability of beds and spaces in the hospital (Hegwer).
It is important to have connections and relationships within the community, especially for when disasters occur. One reason this will benefit the hospital is through communication and delivery of news. Making a constant effort at this will help prepare the community for disasters. This requires the government’s help and using the past experiences that have failed to better prepare for the next situation. Having more community involvement will also help us identify who our vulnerable populations are in the area and what we can do to better serve them, not only in an emergency situation, but every day. It is important to build these relationships early on, so we are seen as a reliable and trustworthy source for healthcare. Vulnerable populations can include elderly, disabled, hearing impaired, or people who are at a disadvantage due to socioeconomic or immigration status. Some things that
Hospitals play an essential role when it pertains to our health care system. Hospitals are health care organizations that have a structured and well organized medical and professional employees, inpatient facilities, deliver medical, nursing and correlated services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hospitals offer an approach that has a wide range of acute, recuperating and terminal care utilizing diagnostic and healing services. These medical services are utilized when a patient has acute and chronic conditions resulting from diseases in addition to wounds, injuries, and genetic anomalies. By doing this, they create and produce vital data and information for research studies, educational learning, and management. Traditionally, hospitals are
already overwhelmed hospitals, clinics, and medical professionals and reduce workload on the public safety networks, charities, and governmental (or non-governmental) organizations.