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Disaster preparedness

 
Welcome to Modern Healthcare's online site for news and analysis when disaster strikes and public health and safety issues become a priority. Primary sources will be Modern Healthcare staff reporting as well as stories from other news organizations and reports from government sites and public health agencies.

Modern Healthcare's Coverage
News
Metro areas not ready for nuclear incidents: study
By Paul Barr | January 25, 2012 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
The country's 40 largest metropolitan areas are not well prepared to handle a non-power-plant related radiological or nuclear incident, such as a terrorist attack, according to a report from HHS' inspector general's office.
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Magazine
Unsettling news on disaster preparedness
By Modern Healthcare | December 19, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Experts say the country is still not as prepared for disaster as it should be 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
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News
Wildfire disrupts activity at Texas facilities
By Paul Barr | September 06, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Telephones at 33-bed Seton Smithville (Texas) Regional Hospital are out of service because of a wildfire in nearby Bastrop, according to parent Seton Healthcare Family, Austin, Texas.
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Video
Video Feature: Modern Healthcare's Advance Notice for the week of Sept. 5, 2011 (1:24)
September 03, 2011
Welcome to Advance Notice, Modern Healthcare's preview of news for the week ahead.
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News
Report examines role of public health during 9/11
By Paul Barr | September 01, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
The Trust for America's Health, Washington, released a report commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks of that time that includes more than 30 essays on public health's role during the attacks, as well as reports on how the country has responded.
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Information
Irene creates paperwork tangle for hospitals
By Crain's New York Business | August 31, 2011
On Monday, many of the patients who had been evacuated from hospitals and nursing homes in advance of Hurricane Irene were transferred back—leaving financial chaos in the hurricane's wake.
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News
East Coast hospitals wrestle with Irene's impact
By Modern Healthcare staff | August 29, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Although Hurricane Irene didn't deliver the punch that was feared as it approached, hospitals across much of the Eastern Seaboard will spend the week assessing damage and restoring operations after preparing for the worst.
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Magazine
Late News: Waiting for Irene | East Coast hospitals brace for powerful hurricane
By Vince Galloro, Melanie Evans and Jessica Zigmond | August 29, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Healthcare providers along the East Coast from North Carolina to New England girded themselves for an expected beating from Hurricane Irene, which was on track to make landfall in North Carolina on Saturday and then move north along the coast.The precautions included a mandatory evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes in low-lying areas of New York City. HHS activated the National Disaster Medical System and U.S. Public Health Service to provide medical teams, public health teams and hospital support.
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Information
Share your Hurricane Irene experiences
By Modern Healthcare | August 29, 2011
Share your experiences as healthcare leaders weathering the aftermath of Hurricane Irene with fellow Modern Healthcare readers on Facebook, Flickr and via Twitter to @modrnhealthcr.Post photos and describe how you and your organizations are coping with the storm's impact. Modern Healthcare will incorporate the dispatches in its continuing coverage of the storm.
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News
New York hospitals begin assessing Irene damage
By Melanie Evans | August 28, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
New York City hospitals that evacuated hundreds of patients ahead of Hurricane Irene began to assess the damage after the storm's winds and rains resulted in disrupted power and flooding across the city.
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News
N.C., Va. providers deal with Irene aftermath as New York faces flooding
By Paul Barr and the Associated Press | August 28, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Healthcare providers in North Carolina and Virginia began dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene as the storm, now downgraded to tropical-storm status, continued north toward New England.
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News
East Coast providers brace for Hurricane Irene
By Vince Galloro and Melanie Evans | August 26, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Healthcare providers along the East Coast from North Carolina to New England are preparing for the impact of Hurricane Irene, expected to make landfall in North Carolina Saturday and then move north along the coast.
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News
Advice from execs who coped with Katrina
By Jessica Zigmond | August 26, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
As Hurricane Irene approaches, so does the six-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when healthcare executives learned best from the nation's worst natural disaster about how to keep their hospitals operating.
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News
Hurricane resources available online
By Paul Barr | August 26, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
A number of online resources are available to healthcare providers and their patients seeking information and guidance about how to prepare for and deal with the effects of Hurricane Irene.
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News
Share your Hurricane Irene experiences
By Gregg Blesch | August 26, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Share your experiences as healthcare leaders weathering Hurricane Irene with fellow Modern Healthcare readers on Facebook and via Twitter to @modrnhealthcr.Post photos and describe how you and your organizations are preparing for the storm and coping with its impact, assuming Hurricane Irene maintains its predicted path and strength and causes mayhem across wide swaths of the East Coast.
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News
HHS launches disaster-app challenge
By Joseph Conn | August 10, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
What can you do in a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, tornado or hurricane?
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Magazine
Late News: HHS distributes $352 million in disaster-planning grants
By Modern Healthcare | July 04, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Individual hospitals and healthcare systems in each of the 50 states were provided a portion of $352 million in HHS grants to improve their disaster planning and response capabilities.
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News
McCune-Brooks Regional to expand to aid hospital destroyed by tornado
By Paul Barr | July 03, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
McCune-Brooks Regional Hospital, Carthage, Mo., signed an assistance agreement with St. John's Mercy Hospital, Joplin, Mo., in which McCune-Brooks will expand to 52 beds from 25.
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News
Over $350 million awarded for disaster planning
By Rich Daly | July 01, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Individual hospitals and healthcare systems in each of the 50 states were provided a portion of $352 million in HHS grants awarded today to improve their disaster planning and response capabilities.
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Magazine
Action plan | IOM report lauded, but may be hard to implement
By Paul Barr | June 27, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
The Institute of Medicine's newly released outline for how to improve the legal and regulatory framework to advance public health faces the usual obstacle of funding, but the public health community welcomed it as a valuable resource for the years to come.
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News
Feds let Mo. system add beds after tornado
By Paul Barr | June 06, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Freeman Health System, Joplin, Mo., has gotten federal waivers to add as many as 89 beds to accommodate the extra patients resulting from the tornado that struck the town May 22, destroying the other local hospital, 347-bed St. John's Regional Medical Center.
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Magazine
After the storm | St. John's faces rebuilding a shattered hospital amid questions on the size of its future market, the changing needs of reform and a tornado-driven data breach
By Paul Barr | May 30, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Rebuilding a hospital decimated by natural disaster would be tough enough. St. John's Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Mo., faces particularly difficult obstacles that go beyond the physical destruction caused by the tornado.
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News
Mercy vows to rebuild Mo. hospital
By Paul Barr | May 25, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Executives overseeing 347-bed St. John's Regional Medical Center, the Joplin, Mo., hospital hit last Sunday by a tornado, pledged to the community that it will rebuild and unveiled plans for a 60-bed mobile hospital that it expects to be in place by Sunday.
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News
System rushes to aid hospital hit by tornado
By Maureen McKinney | May 23, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Sisters of Mercy Health System is mobilizing available resources and staff members to aid the disaster response effort at 347-bed St. John's Regional Medical Center, Joplin, Mo. The hospital is part of 22-hospital Mercy, based in Chesterfield, Mo. St. John's was severely damaged by a massive tornado that tore through the region Sunday.
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News
Southern storms leave hospitals scrambling
By Maureen McKinney | April 28, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Hospitals across the South scrambled to maintain operations and treat patients after a series of powerful storms on Wednesday and early Thursday left hundreds dead and the region heavily damaged.
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Supplement
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - Events Category Contestant | Modern Healthcare's 35th Anniversary Big Impact Tournament
By Modern Healthcare | April 04, 2011
Few will forget the imagery from Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, 19 hijackers took control of four jetliners. Two were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing more than 2,600; another plane struck the Pentagon, where 125 died. The fourth plane didn't reach the terrorists' target, thanks to the bravery of passengers and crew members who fought to regain control of the plane; but it crashed in rural Pennsylvania, killing all aboard. In New York, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, hospitals put their disaster plans into effect, preparing for mass...
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Magazine
Crisis prevention | U.S. prepared to handle disaster, experts say
By Paul Barr | March 21, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Japan's unfolding crisis raises the question of how well prepared the U.S. would be to withstand such a disaster, including radiation exposure. Healthcare industry experts are not eager to try to answer that question directly, but many will say the U.S. is in much better shape to handle a radiation disaster or one of any type as a result of preparations that came mainly in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
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News
State health departments unprepared for radiation emergency, survey finds
By Paul Barr | March 14, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
State health departments display substantial gaps in preparedness for a major radiation emergency, including acts of terrorism and unintentional releases of radiation, according to survey results published in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.
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Magazine
Calm during the storm | Disaster plans keep Midwest hospitals running smoothly during blizzard
By Paul Barr | February 07, 2011 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
The snowstorm that ripped through the Midwest last week created scheduling headaches for several hospitals in areas hit by the storm. But the implementation of disaster plans kept problems to a minimum, said hospital and health system officials.
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News
Snow, ice sock Midwest hospitals
By Paul Barr | February 02, 2011 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
Hospitals in areas of the Midwest where snow and ice storms caused havoc launched emergency disaster plans and limited or canceled outpatient care.
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News
HHS hasn't delivered IT disaster-readiness plan: GAO
By Joseph Conn | December 20, 2010 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
HHS has failed to produce and deliver to Congress a strategic plan for creating and evaluating an electronic information network to be used in the event of a catastrophic public health event, according to the Government Accountability Office.
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News
AHRQ publishes emergency-preparedness guide
By Shawn Rhea | December 19, 2010 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has published an emergency-preparedness pocket guide that provides resources to help hospitals design, conduct and evaluate their own emergency-preparedness exercises, with the aim of improving response capabilities.
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Modern Physician
Budget cuts seen threatening emergency preparedness
By Paul Barr | December 14, 2010
Budget cuts at federal, state and local levels are threatening the country's ability to respond to public health emergencies at basic levels, says a report from Trust for America's Health and funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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Magazine
Surgeons offer relief (C.A.R.E.S.--Honorable mention) | Doctors rush to help Haitian earthquake victims
By Ed Finkel | December 13, 2010 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Thousands of Haitian earthquake victims have received medical care from more than 480 members of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons since January, with 500 other doctors on standby.
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Magazine
Climate of confrontation | Health groups urge Congress: Let EPA oversee greenhouse gases
By Gregg Blesch | October 04, 2010 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
Up next for some of the groups that wielded their expertise and influence in Washington to shape and push through a landmark healthcare overhaul: Save the planet?
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Magazine
Prepping for crisis | Study pokes holes in efforts to combat threats: Sebelius
By Maureen McKinney | October 04, 2010 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
As a group of healthcare organizations work to fight the gradual effects of climate change, members of the Senate heard last week about the array of public health catastrophes that healthcare providers have to be ready to handle at a moment's notice.
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Magazine
Late News: HHS outlines strategy to prepare for emergencies
August 23, 2010 | Print Magazine Print Magazine Subscription Details
HHS in a new report outlines a more aggressive strategy for producing medications, vaccines, equipment and supplies needed for unforeseen health emergencies, tactics known as “medical countermeasures.” The nation is facing an increasingly dangerous landscape “where we don't know where the next public health crisis will come from,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at a news conference. She and other federal health officials held the briefing to release The Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise Review: Transforming the Enterprise to Meet...
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News
Nearly $700 million marked for preparedness
By Jessica Zigmond | August 19, 2010 | Basic Web Basic Web Subscription Details
HHS has awarded $698 million through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this fiscal year for public health agencies to strengthen their responses to terrorism or natural disasters.
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Modern Physician
Nearly $700 million marked for preparedness
By Jessica Zigmond | August 19, 2010
HHS has awarded $698 million through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this fiscal year for public health agencies to strengthen their responses to terrorism or natural disasters.
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Modern Physician
Actuaries peg potential pandemic cost at up to $290 billion
By Maureen McKinney | August 08, 2010
A severe influenza pandemic could cost the U.S. healthcare system $290 billion, according to a new report sponsored by the Society of Actuaries. The report stressed the need for disaster planning and pandemic preparedness, particularly on the part of health insurers.
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