Critical Issues with Hospital Evacuation
- The time restrictions due to the threat. While tornadoes, earthquakes, building fires and hazardous material releases (spills) can be highly damaging, the lack of warning makes them much more difficult to incorporate into the plan than floods and hurricanes, which allow more time for evacuation.
- The ability to function during an evacuation. Depending on the nature of the threat, requirements for acute and continuing care can increase. As the threat to the hospital grows along with the added victims requiring treatment, the evacuation decision and process become much more complex.
Evacuation requires resources of types and levels which the hospital is not likely to possess for routine operations. Another subtlety of this problem is that medical professionals, of necessity, become involved in the logistics of evacuation. This reduces their availability for patient care. Thus not only do the demands of evacuation conflict with providing care, but those providing the care are called upon to perform functions with which they are not familiar.