AU Blogspot

 
                 Thanks to Zingaro for permission to use this Photo.

Recent discussions concerning emergency critical care during a pandemic or massive emergency were held between the medical community and the federal government. During severe scenarios, it was agreed that there would be some tough decisions to be made regarding who will receive care and who will not. These issues have arisen due to large scale disasters like the 9/11 attacks in NYC and Katrina. As a security manager or anyone who will be responsible for an emergency plan for their facility, you will need to know and prepare for the fact that your place or many of its people may not receive emergency care.

Staffing, beds, trauma care, are all issues that come into play. Facilities will be stretched to the maximum in the event of a pandemic or disaster. Therefore, employees of medical facilities and their families will get top priority to assure that employees will respond when called to duty. Ambulatory patients will be released to non-emergency facilities, shelters, and their homes. The list of persons who would NOT receive critical care during a pandemic in particular was published in “Chest”, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

In a nutshell, people over 85 years of age, trauma victims, over 60 years old with severe burns, those with serious chronic conditions and those with mental impairments will not receive care in a pandemic. While this is harsh, and is being hashed out with Homeland Security, the US Government appears ready to shield hospitals and doctors from malpractice suits in such an event. They did so after lethal doses of painkillers were given to critically ill patients who would not otherwise survive after Katrina.

Security and CJ students—this issue isn’t cast in stone yet, but do continue to monitor this as discussions continue. However, for the time being, this is the “plan”.  Your facility or some of its’ people may be on their own in an attack or pandemic.

Terry Cochran, CPP
Ashworth Security Management/Services Instructor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Crime Scenes, Violence, Prevention, Legal Rights, Self-Defense, Loss Prevention, Government, Security, History, Special Interest, Technology, Careers, Security Management, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.