By Rose Hoban and Mark Tosczak
With Hurricane Florence bearing down on southeastern North Carolina, some hospitals and other health care facilities have closed while others along and near the coast prepared to stay open even when the storm hits later this week.
Pender Memorial Hospital was scheduled to close by noon Wednesday, according to an announcement on the website of New Hanover Regional Medical Center, which operates the Burgaw-based hospital. The NHRMC Orthopedic Hospital, in Wilmington, and NHRMC Emergency Department-North, in Scotts Hill, as well as the health system’s physician offices and outpatient diagnostic clinics were also scheduled to close.
Novant Brunswick Medical Center’s emergency department will stay open during the storm, but Novant’s physician offices and other facilities in the area will close, spokeswoman Jennifer McQuilken said. Some patients, she said, have been transferred to hospitals farther inland.
At Brunswick Medical Center and other Novant hospitals, staffing levels have been increased and some staff members will end up sleeping on site during the storm, McQuilken said. She said the health system had been communicating with its staff since late last week about how to prepare at home.
And at Bladen Hospital, Cape Fear Valley Health System emergency coordinator James Bullard said the system was evacuating about 11 patients from that low-lying facility to their Hoke facility and closing down.
“We hope to have that accomplished between today and tomorrow,” Bullard said Tuesday afternoon.
“Weathering the storm itself went well, for everybody,” he said of Hurricane Matthew. “It was the aftermath of the flooding that occurred that actually had the greatest impact.”
That sentiment was heard throughout the southeastern part of the state from hospital managers and emergency coordinators, who all said they took important lessons from Matthew and other storms.
Covering the basics
Many health system hurricane preparation activities parallel what ordinary people do. “We’ve been moving around extra supplies, medications, topping off gas tanks for generators,” McQuilken said.
At places such as Southeastern Health’s flagship hospital a big concern is drinking water. During Hurricane Matthew, the area around the hospital was flooded and the municipal water system failed when the drinking water plant was inundated.
Joe Buri, Southeastern Health’s director of facility services, said that post-Matthew, the hospital committed to drilling a new well on their property, which is higher than the surrounding area. That project was actually scheduled to start on Monday, something that took on new urgency with Florence over the horizon.
“So it’s not going to do a lot for us for this particular storm, but it should do for us in the future,” he said. “We’re not anticipating that happening this time around, because the city has made many improvements, as well as we had.”
One of the things that slowed Buri down in getting the work done was that, for the most part, hospitals don’t get reimbursed for these types of disaster upgrades. He said he “spent time looking for the money,” netting a $354,600 grant made in August from the Golden Leaf Foundation to cover the cost of the well and filtration system.
Buri also said the hospital spent $3.5 million to buy new generators. During Matthew, Southeastern Regional started with five generators, but one by one, three developed issues. One seized up during the storm itself, then as the days dragged on, another two generators each had problems. Buri eventually resorted to firing up the first problematic one, which generated clouds of diesel smoke, to the annoyance of many.
Flooding during 1999’s Hurricane Floyd imparted some hard lessons for Greenville’s Pitt County Memorial Hospital, which is now the flagship facility for Vidant Health, a network of eight hospitals and dozens of physician practices throughout the eastern part of the state.
Vidant Medical Center president Brian Floyd said that during that event, that hospital, with more than 900 beds, was an island surrounded by flood waters, and didn’t have running water for days.
“We learned in Floyd the most extreme versions of what we might see take place,” he said.
So, his facility now, for instance, has its own water supply.
“We’ve seen that all before, learned a lot of lessons, and are making sure those things become protocol,” he said.
Surge protection
“Back in the day the preparedness person was the chief security officer or was the communications person,” said Julie Henry, a spokeswoman for the NC Healthcare Association.
Hospital leaders at Southeastern Regional Medical Center have told their patients who use electrically powered oxygen machines that if they don’t have a generator, they can plug in and shelter in the hospital lobby. Elsewhere in the state, physicians and other volunteers are setting up other temporary medical shelters at key locations. Doctors and other volunteers from WakeMed and Duke Medical Center have set up a 100-bed medical support shelter at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro. WakeMed spokeswoman Kristin Kelly Grunman said the shelter had started accepting patients Tuesday afternoon. Duke will be accepting people from hospitals and nursing homes in the eastern part of the state who have been evacuated to fill empty beds in their Triangle-based facilities. Mission Health, in Asheville, is also accepting patients evacuated from hospitals near the coast. Another team of volunteers hosted by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center was planning to start setting up a 60-bed shelter in High Point on Wednesday morning, Wake Forest Baptist spokesman Joe McCloskey said. The shelters are intended to serve people displaced by the storm who have medical needs. A statewide network of volunteers from hospitals dispatches such teams, called State Medical Assistance Teams, during disasters and their aftermath.
But no more. Now most, if not all, facilities hire someone to continually contemplate the worst.
“They’re always making plans for things that are as seemingly innocuous as a broken water line, to the threat to cyberterrorism, to a mass shooting to a natural disaster or bioterrorism or a flu outbreak,” Henry said. “They’re involved in so many different aspects of what happens when there’s a surge of people who need care, or the hospital is compromised in some way.”
And the hospitals drill for disasters.
“We don’t make these things up on the fly,” said Floyd, who also serves as chief operating officer for Vidant Health hospitals. “We anticipate that in times like these, we’ll be working with governmental agencies. We plan for, as we have done in the past, National Guard support when necessary. And so when you talk about the scenarios, our team members have been through this to know all of those contingency plans we might need and partners we might need. All those things are being solidified today.”
Cape Fear Valley Health’s Bullard said he’s had to think and rethink communications. During Matthew, Bladen Hospital lost communications because of poor cell tower access.
“Now… for each of our facilities, we have satellite phones, so barring any mass destruction from that standpoint, we will have some sustained communications capabilities,” he said.
Southeastern Regional lost internet, cell and landline services during Matthew, hospital leaders were reduced to communicating by text for close to a week. Buri said he’s taking a “belt and suspenders” approach with two separate internet service contracts, backup phones and an emergency communication system.
He said that Hurricane Matthew, he just slept whenever he could. “I was on a shift on the command center, 12 hours on, 12 off,” he said.
“There were a lot of things that needed to be taken care of, I didn’t give it a lot of thought, just get them done.”
Buri, Bullard and Floyd said their facilities had stocked up on extra medications and medical supplies. There are other considerations, too, such as enough food to feed staff who may end up living at the facility for days on end and even extra linens.
Southeastern Regional has made allowances for people who are on oxygen compressors to camp out in their lobby, where their life-sustaining machines will have continual power. All those folks and their caregivers will need to be fed too.
“We have tarps and chainsaws and trucks filled up and flashlights charged,” Buri said. “I’m hoping we don’t need to use them, but we’ll be ready if we do.
“It’s still going to be a miserable time, I’m sure.”
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