Hurricane Ian has compelled a number of Florida hospitals to evacuate sufferers and place employees members on lockdown as amenities cope with energy outages and crucial disruptions to water provides.
Mary Mayhew, the CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, mentioned 16 hospitals throughout the state had evacuated or had been within the strategy of evacuating Thursday afternoon.
Some moved sufferers earlier this week when the hurricane was anticipated to make landfall within the Tampa Bay space, she mentioned. Hurricane Ian in the end made landfall close to Fort Myers, about 100 miles south of Tampa Bay, on Wednesday.
Emergency responders are involved about operations in Lee County, the place are not less than 9 hospitals are with out water, Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, mentioned Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Lee Health, one of many county’s largest well being programs, has evacuated extra 1,000 sufferers due to the disrupted water provide, Mayhew mentioned.
“A hospital can’t safely care for their patients without water, and they are in the process of working closely with local and state officials to evacuate their patients because it is unclear how soon that water can be restored,” Mayhew mentioned.
Physical harm to hospitals restricted
Few hospitals have sustained main bodily harm, however hurricane winds stripped a part of the roof from an intensive care unit at HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte on Wednesday. Staff members moved critically ill patients to different flooring and mopped up the water with towels and plastic bins.
Fawcett mentioned in an announcement that it evacuated its sickest sufferers earlier than the storm made landfall. It was transferring 160 extra sufferers to different hospitals after the roof harm prompted leaks, it mentioned.
Kindred, a hospital system offering long-term acute care, additionally evacuated sufferers from places in Tampa and St. Petersburg on Wednesday. In complete, 44 sufferers had been moved by ambulance to a facility in central Tampa, mentioned Susan Feeney, Kindred’s division vp of communications. The hospital is ready on phrase from the state about when the sufferers may be transported again, she mentioned.
“They’re very, very sick patients,” Feeney mentioned. “Many of them have multiple chronic conditions, and a very large percentage of our patients are ventilator-reliant.”
An Advent Health hospital in Tarpon Springs additionally transported sufferers to its sister amenities all through the Tampa Bay space Tuesday night. The sufferers are set to return to the Tarpon Springs location Friday, the hospital mentioned in an announcement.
Meanwhile, different hospitals are initiating emergency procedures. Flagler Health in St. Johns County went on “soft lockdown” Thursday morning, which means it’s closed to guests and gained’t be performing elective procedures.
Erin Wallner, a public information officer at Flagler Health, mentioned round 350 staffers will spend the night time on cots. The hospital is supplied with a 2-ton generator in case energy goes out, and it has positioned sandbags outdoors to guard towards flooding, she mentioned. All doorways have been locked, apart from the emergency room entrance.
Wallner mentioned a child was born in the course of the lockdown.
“We discharged prior to the storm anyone that reasonably could be discharged,” she mentioned. “We had open heart cases that were just done prior to the storm, and they’re here and recovering safely.”
But new accidents from the hurricane may pose an extra problem, Mayhew mentioned.
“There were hundreds of search and rescue operations underway, so I would absolutely anticipate that our hospitals are starting to see individuals arriving from those search and rescue operations that need hospital care,” she said.
Mayhew said damage to the electrical grid could also “have a ripple effect across the health care system,” because hospitals can’t safely discharge patients to homes or nursing facilities that don’t have power.
An escalating threat to Florida hospitals
Hurricane Ian could be a preview of what Florida hospitals can expect in the coming decades.
A study released Thursday by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health assessed flooding damage to Florida hospitals through the end of the century, assuming less than 3 feet of sea level rise.
The researchers determined that a Category 2 hurricane — a storm with winds of 96 to 110 mph that can uproot trees or damage roofs — could threaten access to care in more than 60 hospitals across six Florida metropolitan areas (Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota, Jacksonville and Fort Myers).
At least 21,000 hospital beds are at risk, the report found.
The study’s senior author, Dr. Aaron Bernstein, the interim director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE, a climate change program, said that although Florida hospitals have been well-prepared for hurricanes in the past, future storms are likely to be more dangerous.
“Fort Myers and the Tampa Bay area have invested a lot in hurricanes. They know hurricanes. People in Florida grew up with them. The problem is that climate change is making hurricanes unlike the ones that people have known,” Bernstein said.
One of the biggest challenges to hospital care during a storm is road access, he said.
Bernstein’s study projected that all roads within a mile of hospitals in Punta Gorda are at risk of flooding from a Category 2 storm through the end of the century. In Naples, around 99% of such roads are likely to be flooded. And in metro Miami, it is 72%.
Bernstein said cities tend to build hospitals “in the image of Fort Knox” to prepare for hurricanes by stockpiling supplies and erecting sea walls and submarine doors. But such safeguards aren’t as useful if roads are closed, he said: “You can build Fort Knox, but if you can’t get there, what good is it?”
Restricting entry to hospitals may have lasting well being results, he added, past storm-related deaths.
“When you cut off health care access, any chronic medical condition may get worse, because people aren’t getting care,” he said. “Even without the care access being totally compromised, we see folks who have the least means really suffering, because they’re trying to afford repairing their home or extra expenses and they sacrifice their health.”
A 2019 study discovered that lung most cancers sufferers who had been uncovered to a hurricane whereas they had been receiving radiation had worse survival charges than sufferers who weren’t uncovered. The threat of demise elevated the longer the catastrophe stretched on.
Mayhew mentioned Hurricane Ian’s aftermath may put weak folks in an much more weak place.
“It is going to be weeks before the damage is fully understood, and it may take months to restore the infrastructure,” she said. “That level of uncertainty is daunting when it comes to making sure that you’ve got 24/7 health care operations up and running.”