Hurricane relief and patient care
Plan to use cellular texts to communicate. While satellite telephones are great in concept, in execution, they are difficult to utilize when transmitting complex medical information. If you have an expansive budget, there are now devices available that allow for Iridium satellite-based text communications that require batteries but not intact cellular towers.
Facilities with electricity, water, oxygen, medications, laboratory testing, and CT scanners need to be identified and advertised within the responder community. If FEMA is involved, these resources will be identified and updated on a routine basis. The information will be distributed to their DMAT teams. Those DMAT teams will be distributed throughout the response area. Additionally, if the resources and budgeting are approved, then FEMA will also help re-establish medical transport, as well as Federal Medical Shelters (FMS). The FMS can temporarily house patients who can perform basic activities of daily living but require power, oxygen, or medication administration. For those patients in need of medications without insurance, FEMA may activate medication assistance through the Emergency Prescription Assistance Program. This will allow up to 30 days of medication to be distributed at no cost to the individual through participating pharmacies.
External responders will obviously need to pair with local providers/professionals who can navigate the system and, if necessary, can translate medical terms and care plans. Additionally, external responders will be targets for individuals looking to obtain resources for secondary gain or profit. Establishing a plan or consistently redirecting people to the appropriate resources for those needs may limit the inevitable damage these individuals will cause. Additionally, understand that the efficiencies of the modern society will be gone, and tasks will take much longer than expected. Even if you can communicate by text, the transporting of patients, delivering supplies, meeting with groups, and assessing sites will take far longer than you are used to when none of the stoplights are functional or if gasoline is in limited supply.
Finally, there will be patients for whom no solution, short of an intact, well-resourced medical system, exists—those with severe congenital issues, patients with advanced dementia, patients with advanced cancer, and those with multiple-antibiotic-resistant osteomyelitis are a few of the patients that this response encountered. If transport out of the area is unavailable, NGOs and other charities may be the best, and at times, the only resource for these patients. During this response, I observed NGO and charities helping individual patients and their families with their power, shelter, and medical needs that could not be legally provided by federal government response.
While I hope you may never need to use them, preparations for evacuation, medication, power, and communications before a potential disaster occurs will prove helpful to your patients. After the disaster, consistent and simple communications to the public will be necessary to limit the damage from the social media rumor mill. Working within the organized response framework and leveraging local knowledge and targeted NGO involvement will maximize the effect of your efforts.
