Our “emergency plans” required a state declaration of an Emergency.
The reason for this was that it triggered a cooperative situation with regional hospitals. For example certain cases could be diverted, emergency triage facilities would be established, etc. that stuff is expensive. In addition, in the middle of my city, merely setting stuff up would trigger a communications issue that would have to be addressed.
All that stuff needs to be staffed. We cannot trigger mandatory OT for nurses and other union staff without a declaration. It’s in the contracts.
And, it isn’t necessary yet. That doesn’t mean the staff cannot be going through the “stuff” they need. For example, someone needs to go through the inventory of supplies to confirm stuff hasn’t expired and identify short stocks in the inventory.
I am sure they are talking. But in my old facilities they just consolidated about 80% of the emergency prep staff over 5 hospitals. They consolidated them out of work.
From a logistical and emergency communication perspective, I can assure you they are not prepared. All new systems in the last six months. And the people who would be using these systems intro hospitals haven’t been trained.
Ramp up is going to take a while.
My wife works at an old folks home. I asked her yesterday if anyone has been talking about covid19. Nope. How about on facebook?(she has 200 fb friends) Nope. Do they have masks at work? I think we have a few cheapo paper ones. Geez We’re 80 miles from St Louis so you just know some of those old people have kids in St Louis that will come to visit.
We live in rural Missouri and no p95/n95 masks is about the only sign I see. No one’s stocking up or at least there’s no empty shelves. We’re stocking up a little every time we go to a store. Buying 2-3 when we would normally buy one. I plan on doing one big shopping day this week be need to clean out the pantry(mics shelves and cabinets all over the house). Need to do some Spring cleaning in general to make room too. TP takes up a lot of space.
Yeah. Local hospital here, which is at least “average good” was “upgrading their IT systems” while my Dad was in and out of there. They were screwed up for over a year - maybe more, as Dad passed away and I’ve not been back, since.