By Cathy Denning

The new year brings little relief to hospitals across the country who continue to battle the most virulent strain of the flu in recent record—a staggering 17,101 influenza-associated hospitalizations from October 2017 to early February 2018.

This national epidemic comes directly on the heels of the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season that devastated coastal communities and Puerto Rico. These adverse events strain hospital resources and staff who are responsible for a high volume of high-acuity patients. Shortages of critical medical supplies, like IV fluids and medical products primarily manufactured in Puerto Rico, place additional stress on the healthcare system.



At Vizient, the country’s largest member-owned healthcare services company, we work shoulder-to-shoulder with hospitals to help prepare and support their efforts to maintain operations during catastrophic events. We do this by leveraging healthcare management expertise to provide hospitals with strategies to help reduce the risks associated with emergencies and other unpredictable events.

Hospitals understand the need for emergency preparedness plans. In fact, more than 97% of hospitals have a protocol in place for responding to natural disasters, specifically. The Joint Commission, a hospital accrediting body, requires hospitals to conduct emergency drills, which allow for the simulation of critical procedures. During these simulations, hospital staff and leadership practice how to maintain patient surge capacity, communicate with external health and public safety communities, and coordinate with nearby hospitals.

However, preparing for a crisis extends beyond conducting drills. We advise hospitals to maximize emergency readiness by following these additional steps:

Address operational vulnerabilities. Hospitals should review electrical, water, HVAC and plumbing systems, fire protection systems, and medical gases management. An electrical system must be able to generate power for critical operations for at least 96 hours.

Install redundant communication capabilities including multiple back-up communication modalities, such as two-way radios and fax machines, to be used if primary systems fail.

Reduce stress on hospital power systems through cogeneration, a process that produces heat and electricity from a single fuel source, such as natural gas or biomass. Hospitals can also conserve energy by identifying low- or no-cost alternatives to energy-intensive operations, like solar panels.

Rethink design of facility. For example, after Hurricane Katrina rendered the Veterans Affairs medical facility in New Orleans non-operational, hospital administrators took an “upside-down” approach to its redesign, putting the emergency department, electrical units and generators on the higher floors to avoid damage from flooding.


Develop geographic-specific plans. Create plans that reflect the local weather patterns and frequency of other adverse events endemic to that area. A Dallas hospital, for example, adapted their readiness plan to include protocols for mass causalities resulting from plane crashes after multiple incidents at a nearby airport. Just as facilities in Gulf Coast states need to prepare for hurricane season, northern states have to prepare for winter storms. In California, the specter of managing a damaging earthquake or wildfire is never far from a hospital leader’s mind.

Avoid stockpiling supplies. In certain circumstances, suppliers and distributors place critical products on allocation based on need in order to prevent unnecessary strain on the supply chain due to panic acquisition or purchasing beyond the need. Each facility should ensure it has enough supplies, but avoid stockpiling.



Triage patients appropriately and relocate patients, such as ventilator-dependent patients, infants in the NICU and other vulnerable patients, whose needs cannot be met given an impending disaster. Facilities should assess their particular capabilities and act accordingly.

Learn from past surprises. In October of 2014, the Ebola outbreak reached the United States. In particular, Dallas hospitals found themselves inadequately prepared to contain the highly infectious virus. Yet, the local hospitals quickly adapted, putting protocols in place for information management and proper sterilization, including best practices for gowning, gloving and preparing patient rooms. Comprehensive guidelines for donning and doffing personal protective equipment for infectious diseases and can be found here.

If there is one thing we’ve learned this past year, it is that emergencies can be hugely disruptive to hospital systems and that preparing for them is a constant and evolving process. At Vizient, we understand that major events will continue to pose a significant threat to the healthcare system in 2018, and we encourage hospital leadership to plan, prepare and practice to ensure patient safety and care continuity when an emergency strikes.

About the Author: As senior vice president of sourcing operations, Cathy Denning has responsibility for the company's capital, medical and surgical sourcing, distribution, contract process and technology, strategic programs, physician preference and supplier diversity operations. She uses her 32 years of progressive experience in the health care industry to provide strategic and operational leadership for many of the sourcing operations programs. Before joining Vizient, Denning was in clinical practice in the acute care arena as a staff nurse, unit manager and oncology clinical specialist. Her other experience includes clinical practice, market and program management and development, staff training, The Joint Commission and quality assurance program management, and corporate compliance auditing.