Hospital proves its 96-hour mettle in emergency plans

Hurricane Ike displaced a lot of people and changed a lot of plans, including Huntsville (TX) Memorial Hospital’s Joint Commission survey. The survey was originally scheduled to take place in the second week of September 2008, but as Ike’s path became clear and disaster preparation escalated in earnest, the accreditor decided to reschedule.

“If [surveyors] wanted to know my disaster plan, they should have showed up then,” says Charlene Gordon, RN, the ER clinical coordinator and emergency preparedness manager at Huntsville Memorial. “I’d have given them a vest and put them to work!” The survey took place January 12–16, and the hospital had all the right answers for surveyors in terms of emergency management planning, Gordon says.