How is your facility planning for the upcoming hurricane season?
HospiceCare of Southeast Florida, Inc. serves Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties. This area presents a wide variety of issues that need to be addressed in the event of an emergency or disaster. As a community based organization, we begin with our staff. Each member of the staff is required to annually inform the agency of their own plans in the event of an emergency – will they evacuate, where are they going and who is their out of area contact person with phone number? We provide staff with an updated Emergency Preparedness Plan booklet, and share with them ways to keep themselves and their families safe. Staff are required to sign up for work before the hurricane hits, to work during the storm in a safe, and locked down, site, or to work when the all clear is sounded. HospiceCare recognizes that without our staff we are unable to meet the needs of our patients, their families and the community we serve. Patients and families are asked to give us their plans. Those patients who are unable to evacuate on their own, we assist them in making plans. Those who have no where to go, or are ineligible for a special needs shelter we move to our emergency care center in the corporate office. Each family is given an Emergency Disaster Plan booklet on admission to the HospiceCare program, and this booklet is updated annually. HospiceCare has a residential facility for 8 patients, and we can have up to 10 in the facility in the event of an emergency. We have established an emergency disaster care center at our corporate office in Fort Lauderdale that can house up to 10 patients. We staff it around the clock, and once the storm force winds reach 40 miles per hour, we lock the patients and staff in until the all clear is sounded. We stock their medications, food, water, and medical supplies with enough to last for two weeks. What lessons have you learned from the past? In order to provide shelter, food and care for patients we have installed a generator to power the entire corporate campus in Fort Lauderdale. We learned during Hurricane Wilma, you can not totally rely on mechanical devices. You must have a contingency plan. As a result, we have upgraded our kitchen at the corporate office to handle all the necessary cooking duties to feed the patients and staff during the storm, and to assist our staff after the storm who may not be able to care for themselves or their family due to damage/power loss. Will you be doing anything different this year? We have updated our Emergency Preparedness Plan, and have secured a grant to cover 85% of the cost of installing hurricane proof glass in all windows and doors at the corporate office.
