Hospitals Hurricanes and Other Disasters

¶ … catastrophic events can impact hospital risk financing, the purchasing of new physical property and insurance. Catastrophes can range from terrorist acts like 9/11 to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina to biological endemics/outbreaks that shut down entire cities for days as medical teams race to erect quarantines in order to stop the spread. Each catastrophe has its own unique fall-out and impact. Terrorist attacks call for higher alert by law enforcement authorities and demand more scrutiny and optimum records keeping by hospitals, for safety's sake.

Natural disasters call for optimum coordination among the various impacted medical facilities so that the best and highest quality care can be delivered in a collaborative fashion to those in need who are detrimentally affected. And biological outbreaks can be threatening to hospitals especially as they are in the business of treating patients who might have come into contact with a deadly illness and thus have to safeguard against these issues.

Thus, there are a variety of impacts -- from safety and security to team work and coordination to careful consideration and knowledge of what to do when a life-threatening instances occur. While a terrorist attack like 9/11 is viewed as a "worst case scenario" by insurance companies, the frequency with which terror attacks occur today makes these scenarios all too common and thus require some thoughtfulness on the part of insurance companies looking to mitigate risk (RMS, 2015, p. 1).

In terms of hospital financing, a terror attack is definitely a cause of concern in today's world. Likewise, purchasing new physical property in the likelihood of an attack would be an almost certainty, as such attacks are highly destructive. Thus the hospital would need to engage in risk financing, which is "the utilization of funds to cover the financial effect of unexpected losses or, simply put, to cover the costs related to unplanned adverse events" (Epstein, 2014, p. 123).

The same goes for a natural disaster such as a flood or hurricane or earthquake. Risk has to be mitigated or transferred so that hospitals can continue to function, survive and rebuild if necessary. This is where insurance comes into play and can be an effective way for hospitals to guard against the risk of catastrophe.

Hospitals thus need to guard against catastrophes so that they can both be in a position to serve those impacted by them and be able to weather the storms of catastrophic events themselves; if their infrastructures are insecure or are damaged they will not be able to function adequately to do the job they are needed to perform.

Thus, for hospitals in flood zones, flooding equipment should be utilized; in hurricane zones, back-up generators should be installed and they should have enough fuel to last for the duration of the hurricane and after in case power is not restored for a few days -- which is a lesson that hospitals in Florida learned the hard way during Hurricane Charley in 2004 (Gould, 2015). Having supplemental fuel, generators, and back-ups for a significant duration of time helps to protect hospitals from infrastructural failures that result from catastrophes.

In this sense, it is not just the catastrophe itself.