Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
Health care providers must strictly adhere to emergency preparedness plans and document compliance with all efforts. Assume that long after the emergency ends, challenges to the adequacy of all efforts will be made by regulatory agencies, media and juries.
The nursing home where 12 residents died after Hurricane Irma swept through the area is battling with Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) to keep its license and reopen.
Paramedics were called and testified about their experience with the facility on Sept. 13, 2017 when they entered the facility to render help. They were specifically asked how they thought the “evacuation of the second floor of the rehab center went, and if they thought it was necessary and done correctly.”
The first paramedic to testify was a captain with the Fire Department working as an EMS. He was the person in charge of getting the extremely overheated and elderly residents moved to the hospital. Those elderly residents had been without air conditioning in extremely hot and humid conditions for almost three days after the hurricane. The captain testified, “This was initially just transporting critical patients, and it turned into an evacuation, and there were so many patients that had to be transported out that it turned into a mass casualty.”
The next paramedic who testified, reported being impressed with all the hospital staff and the paramedics who were on the scene reacting quickly to help the distressed residents. He indicated that the most shocking thing he saw was the elderly residents enduring temperatures as high as 108 degrees inside the facility. He said it was a “career first” and he likened it to toxic gas being inside the building-an “unsafe, dangerous environment for the people who were there, and they needed to be removed.”
The nursing home will be presenting its case as the hearing proceeds.
