Background: You are the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator in a local health department whose jurisdiction includes a coastal area prone to flooding during the hurricane season. There is a long-term care (LTC) facility in the county. The residents have a variety of functional needs, among them limited English language proficiency, as some residents are members of the county’s Hispanic and Russian communities, and dementia. You have been asked by the health officer and director of the LTC facility to review the facility’s preparedness plan. While the plan has a section on evacuation due to storms and other emergencies, it is limited in scope and has never been tested. You note, for example, that the plan makes no mention of potential partners in a medical surge situation, nor does it reference two other LTC facilities located in the same coastal area in the neighboring county. This point is of particular concern to you because a severe storm would have serious implications for all three LTC facilities, not just the one in your county. The plan also doesn’t satisfactorily address how the range of residents’ functional needs would be met. You have decided to write a memo to the health officer and director of the LTC facility about improving the facility’s emergency preparedness plan.
Instructions: Write a memo to the health officer and LTC facility director in which you propose how the emergency plan might be improved. Give particular attention to a storm/hurricane/flooding annex. Consider the challenges that the facility and responders would face in evacuating the residents. Explain three issues that would need to be addressed in a medical surge situation involving both this LTC facility and the other two in the adjacent county. Point out what responders would need to think about for each of the three issues you identify with respect to planning for an emergency event and managing the emergency event. Justify why a revised plan would need to incorporate more specific thinking about how the safety and health of the residents with functional needs would be guaranteed. In your conclusion for the memo, recommend which partners the health officer and LTC facility director might want to work with and why, as well as what the overall process to improve the preparedness plan might entail.
