A new federal report finds hospitals in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey were not prepared to meet the challenges of Superstorm Sandy.
The study, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Inspector General Office, was released Wednesday. It's based on surveys of 174 hospitals and site visits to ten hospitals hit hard by the storm in October 2012.
The report found that hospitals had surges in patients that were unexpected, as well as power outages, and problems with backup generators and transportation to get employees into work. It said that nearly 90 percent of the hospitals faced "critical challenges."
From the report:
Most hospitals in declared disaster areas sheltered in place during Superstorm Sandy, and seven percent evacuated. Eighty-nine percent of hospitals in these areas reported experiencing substantial challenges in responding to the storm. These challenges represented a range of interrelated problems from infrastructure breakdowns, such as electrical and communication failures, to community collaboration issues over resources, such as fuel, transportation, hospital beds, and public shelters. Hospitals reported that prior emergency planning was valuable during the storm and that they subsequently revised their plans as a result of lessons learned. Prior to the storm, most hospitals received emergency-related deficiency citations from hospital surveyors, some of which related to the challenges reported by hospitals during Superstorm Sandy.
In many cases, the issues had been identified in citations for deficiencies issued in the years before the storm.
This report includes information from The Associated Press.
