Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Hurricane Season:
The Compliance Officer needs to ensure that the facility’s Emergency Preparedness Plan is in place and working and this should be communicated to the Compliance Committee. The wide-spread, disastrous events from hurricanes and wild fires from last year further emphasize the importance of emergency preparedness. Last year 14 residents of a Florida nursing home lost their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Since that time, the nursing home has been working to have its license reinstated.
Because heat stroke was the primary problem when the nursing home had no power or generators to operate an air conditioning system, the nursing home’s attorneys have endeavored to demonstrate that the staff responded reasonably in their response to the emergency. To do this, an expert witness on “heat stroke” was brought in to testify to an administrative judge dealing with the nursing home case. The expert witness told the judge he was unaware of any national standards for the elderly in nursing homes regarding “prevention, recognition and treatment of heat stroke.”
The state of Florida has enacted new laws regarding generators that require nursing homes and assisted living facilities to install permanent generators. The nursing home’s representatives believe that the new law combined with “training and disaster preparedness” makes the nursing home better able to protect and care for residents in the future.
A representative from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) has told news media that facilities in the state have been “doing disaster drills, working on their emergency preparedness plans, training their staff and making sure they have everything they need to be ready for the hurricane season.”
Representatives from some of the nursing homes and assisted living facilities agreed that while every hurricane system and storm is unique and has different challenges, the key is to learn from the past and be better prepared for the future.
The AHCA reported that detailed information will be forthcoming regarding the number of nursing homes and assisted living facilities that have complied with the new generator law. The deadline for being compliant is June 1.
