by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | November 06, 2017
From the November 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
He and his team began phoning and advising their customers days before Irma arrived on how best to protect equipment. These suggestions included moving portable equipment above ground floors and placing devices in different rooms to prevent all from incurring damage in one area.
“Make sure you have contingencies in place for what large storms like Hurricane Irma can mean in terms of flooding, water intrusion from above and windows, wind damage, hospital structural damage and long-term power outages,” he told HCB News. “Think about what the imaging department expectations are in the event the hospital needs to be evacuated either before the storm or possibly after the storm due to damage or complete power loss.”
The team also traveled to customer sites to assess equipment – particularly MR units, which are vulnerable during long-term power outages because of their superconductivity and dependence on liquid helium – and advised clients on post-storm tactics for equipment protection should the team be delayed from returning due to mandatory evacuations or unsafe road conditions.
Mobile imaging companies followed a similar protocol, working with customers in Texas and Florida days before the storms arrived to retrieve mobile units and relocate them to higher ground or areas outside the storms’ reach.
Insight Imaging, a provider of mobile imaging solutions, assessed units in the potential path of both storms and relocated them to storage areas. Customers with bolted down fixed units were advised to keep emergency power equipment nearby while other units that could not be taken from harm’s way were placed between buildings and held down with hurricane straps.
“There are always variables that you can’t take into account,” Steve Richter, senior vice president and general manager of the mobile division at Insight Imaging, told HCB News. “We just made sure that any unit that we could get out we got out of the path of the storm and then tried to get back in as fast as possible to service our customers.”
Imaging and radiology departments also planned ahead by consulting and bringing in staff members in advance, relocating equipment and making plans to counter anticipated damage.
St. Joseph Medical Center, for example, put in place alternative plans to move operations if wind from Harvey disrupted the ability to use walkways that join buildings of the hospital.
“I spoke to the facilities engineer here because I had never been in this building and asked, ‘What are the things that I need to know way out in advance, about 48 hours in advance?’ ” says St. Joseph’s Posern.
