Preventing the Perfect Storm: What Every Hospital and Nursing Home Needs to Know for a Natural Disaster

With the apparent increase in natural disasters occurring throughout the world, health care providers face a significant challenge in providing reasonable care and protecting their patients during and after natural disasters. Health care providers not only must meet the challenges of the natural disaster, but they must also confront the aftereffects of the catastrophe. However, providers must also brace themselves for a new looming storm. When the woeful unpreparedness of some nursing homes and hospitals combines with patient harm and injury, financial loss, and legal liability, these providers face an impending and menacing "perfect storm," one potentially created of their own doing. Providers should take action to deliver adequate care, protect patients and improve safety -- thus avoiding an additional disaster. Health care providers may do so by developing effective emergency plans, selecting appropriate building sites, conscientiously planning and designing facilities with natural disasters in mind, properly developing and sustaining communication plans and infrastructure, and constructing, operating, and maintaining health care facilities to withstand, or minimize, the effects of natural disasters. While taking these precautions is not without cost or drawback, hospitals and nursing homes must take additional steps to confront the increased challenges of the escalating occurrence of natural disasters and improve patient safety. By enhancing health care facilities and limiting patient harm, health care providers will prevent a natural disaster from becoming the provider's own "perfect storm."