title: Hospitals in the storm-battered Northeast get lessons in recovery, retooling from Louisiana colleagues.
abstract: When Hurricane Katrina devastated greater New Orleans in 2005, only one hospital was able to stay fully operational throughout the crisis. Not only was Ochsner Health System's main campus situated on higher ground than most facilities, it also had access to food, water, and enough emergency power to keep the doors open. Nonetheless, administrators took advantage of lessons learned during the crisis to beef up communications and make emergency systems more robust for the next storm. And now they are sharing these lessons with colleagues in the Northeast who have just been through their own monster storm crisis with Hurricane Sandy. Ochsner was able to weather Katrina with partial emergency power, but it has since made sure that all hospitals within the Ochsner system have access to full emergency power, if need be. To overcome communications difficulties experienced during Katrina, Ochsner has implemented several methods of communications, including satellite phone links with the switchboard and short-wave radios. These systems are tested regularly. Hospital administrators advise colleagues to make emergency plans for their facilities to operate without any external support. Steps short of this goal will potentially leave you inadequately prepared, they say.
mesh_terms: D055867:Cyclonic Storms; D004190:Disasters; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008145:Louisiana; D009511:New England; D058996:Quality Improvement