Officials at MeritCare Hospital in Fargo, ND, were recently rewarded for their crisis prevention efforts when they successfully evacuated 180 of their most delicate patients in the face of a raging blizzard. With a flood predicted, executive vice president Bruce Pitts was forced to make a move and, kept tight by twice-daily video conferences, hospital and government officials worked together almost seamlessly. Newsroom site ProPublica says:
By the time the evacuation trigger was pulled at MeritCare, patients had been ready to roll for hours, baggies of medicines at their bedsides, checklists on their doors, and bar-coded triage bracelets on their wrists whose colors indicated the type of transport required. “We were actually overly prepared,” said Loretta Bartholomay, chief clinical officer at Triumph Hospital [9], an independently-owned “hospital within a hospital” for long term acute care patients located at MeritCare.
The more you prepare, the less crisis management you need to do. These officials saved a lot of lives and all it took was a little forethought.
JB
Jonathan Bernstein
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com