Emergency Planning for Hospices and Eldercare Agencies

The recent floods in the Midwest have highlighted the need for hospices and other agencies that provide care to the elderly to have an emergency plan in place in case of a natural disaster. This post from Caregiverlist.com provides a checklist for those providing care in an elderly person's home. Pallimed conducted an interview with David Wensel, DO, hospice & palliative medicine physician for Hospice of North Iowa. Dr. Wensel discussed the challenges of providing care to their hospice patients after the flooding.

Pallimed: What are the important lessons learned from the flooding to share with other hospice agencies as they look at their own disaster planning?

Dr. Wensel: The greatest lesson learned is to plan for the worse case scenario. As a hospice think about if you lost half your staff, some of your patients had to be evacuated, and you had no safe water. You can never plan for every possible problem that might come up, but it would be very helpful to talk through different disaster plans with your staff. You never realize how wonderful it is to wash your hands, brush your teeth or take a bath until you can't. I had never thought about all the things we do to care for patents that require water.