Hospitals, when organizing a pandemic preparedness plan, especially for influenza, should consider supplies such as personal protective equipment (PPEs) - gloves and surgical masks - vaccines, antiviral medications like Tamiflu and most importantly, hospital staff.

Mount Sinai Medical Center not only worked to maintain supply recommendations from the New York Department of Health and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it also installed alcohol-based soaps throughout the hospital. This was just one of many steps the hospital - based in congested New York City - took to protect patients and employees.


The H1N1 outbreak forced health care facilities to turn to surgical facemasks and at the recommendation (and during the second wave, a requirement) of the CDC, N95 respirators for barrier protection. This is where Mount Sinai experienced its shortcoming. While hospital staff was fit-tested for one type of respirator for the stockpile, manufacturers fell short in supplying enough of them during the second wave of the pandemic.

"If one vendor can't keep up and you move on to another mask, you then need to fit-test [for that mask]," says Chason. "In the middle of a crisis when you run out of masks, you have to figure out how to fit-test another brand of masks."

As a direct response to this problem, the hospital's policy is to now stockpile more than one brand of masks that have been fit-tested for hospital staff.

According to a joint survey conducted by APIC, Materials Management in Healthcare (MMHC) and the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management, 60 percent of respondents said they experienced a shortage of the respirators prior to December 2009, and one-third indicated they had to undergo new fit-testing.

Masks and respirators were all the rage during the outbreaks. In fact, a 2009 study published in Annals of Internal Medicine showed that H1N1 patients who wore face masks were less likely to pass the virus on to others. Masks were a common supply in both hospital and national stockpiles during the recent pandemic, but in some cases, suppliers couldn't produce fast enough. According to the MMHC survey, 38 percent reported a shortage in surgical masks prior to December 2009.

Mike Bowen, executive vice president of Prestige Ameritech, which manufactures surgical masks, had an influx of orders from hospitals that were stranded by their overseas suppliers.




"Everyone started panicking," he says. "...Hospitals were pleading with us for more products. They couldn't get them from their normal suppliers. We were turning away customers...We turned away millions in orders."

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