Home Health & Hospice Week

Loss of electricity, phones tests providers' emergency plans. Hurricane Gustav may not have been as bad a storm as predicted, but many home care providers still have major challenges in its wake. The impact on the home care industry began before Gustav's landfall on Sept. 1. Home health agencies, hospices and home medical equipment suppliers put into place their emergency plans generated for just such events. HHAs: HHAs are required as part of their state licensure to have such emergency plans, notes Warren Hebert with the HomeCare Association of Louisiana. In the days prior to Gustav, agencies were contacting patients to implement their individual emergency plans and reporting patients who needed help evacuating to local governments, He-bert tells Eli. Oxygen: In the same time period, home oxygen suppliers worked to ensure that any patients in need of care as the storm hit were "quickly located, identified and provided the equipment, supplies and services they require to maintain their therapy throughout the duration of the crisis," says the Council for Quality Respiratory Care, a coalition of the biggest oxygen companies. Oxygen providers across the state completed their delivery routes and were supplied extra carts of cylinders for emergency use in advance of the storm, CQRC says. Providers set up phones to remotely route to other areas with service. "We have addressed emergency plans in each location and have contacted high acuity patients to make sure they are safe and understand their own evacuation plans," Andy Ingram, Apria Healthcare's vice president of operations for the Mid South Region, said in the CQRC release. Apria also informed patients of other locations around the region and explained to them that it had set up at least 12 depots in local towns where they could come by and get supplies, if needed. Electricity outages are hard on oxygen patients, who require power for their concentrators, the Council maintains. Hospice: Four of the United States' 15 deaths attributed to Gustav occurred with hospice patients who died while waiting to evacuate, Rich-ard Zuschlag, chairman and CEO of Acadian Am-bulance, told CNN. Communications, Gas Top List Of Problems Home care providers' emergency plans have been implemented much more smoothly this time around, thanks to equally good preparation on the part of the federal and state government, as well as patients, Hebert judges. Those are lessons learned from Katrina and Rita. Publicly traded home care chains Amedisys Inc. and LHC Group Inc., both headquartered in Louisiana, report minimal business disruption due to the storm. But providers still face many challenges post-Gustav. First is knocked-out communications, Hebert says. Phone landlines are down in affected areas and cell phones can be difficult to use due to heavy volume. That's despite the [...]