In Times of Crisis
Written August 8th, 2007 by Thomas AmesWith much of the initial frantic coverage of the 35W bridge collapse over, the spotlight turns to analyzing what went wrong and how it was handled. The local hospitals and other health facilities will be analyzed for their prompt action and organization of patients and diagnoses. Likewise, their web communications team will ultimately be judged on their ability to promptly post important information clearly so families and media alike can find what they need.
Hennepin County Medical Center received 28 injured people out of the perhaps 79+ who were injured. According to a report, they had received 24 by ambulance out of the 55 taken by that route. Even days after the disaster, they continue to release news releases on the front page of the website. I’ve been unable to find for certain other hospitals that continue to use their website for 35W-related information.
HCMC’s use of website-based news releases is, in my opinion, adequate for a smaller-type disaster like that of 35W. The yield of patients was relatively small, and while communication with families was important, the amount of families contacting the hospitals for their family member’s condition was most likely controllable and easy to manage.
But what about widespread crises in a time of chaos? What means and procedures have been set up for web-based communication?
While releasing news on the main page of a website is sufficient for small disasters, the level of communication and organization will need to increase with that of the yield of destruction. In times of large earthquakes, tsunamis, or terrorist attacks, a large, multi-organization web resource might be needed. This is easy if you’re a part of a large organization with multiple hospitals in a local area, but have you considered communication agreements with other local competitors?
These are all questions we must consider because we are often on the front line when it comes to emergencies. In addition to the chaos caused by the destruction itself, we must also be ready for the chaos contributed by those looking for information. Families, patients, emergency services, and media outlets will be looking for real-time data. This calls for a consistent but clear message.
Are you ready?
August 8th, 2007 at 8:00 am
We’re not ready for anything of a large scale, but we’re working on it. It’s sad that it takes real disasters elsewhere to focus attention on the infrastructure that you don’t yet have.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:09 am
We have a Crisis Communication Plan in place … I believe we talked about this after the U. of Michigan tragic plane crash. While, as you say, what we would post would likely be “adequate” for most emergencies, something larger would create more chaos and the Web presence would leave most visitors disappointed.
We have contingencies for communicating with families in a larger crisis in our plans, but they don’t really include the Web that much. Part of that is for confidentiality reasons. While I can say that I wish we had a better Web plan, I’m not really sure what that would look like, because, in the end, what people will really be interested in “Is my loved one there, and what is the status?” Can we really ever offer that on the Web? Am I missing something?
August 8th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Chris, that’s something that has been brought up in the past here. Because we at Children’s are part of a large network based around St. Louis (and Barnes-Jewish Hospital is literally beside us), we were looking into a large scale emergency plan that would essentially take down our regular website and institute an almost entirely HTML-based website (for easy downloading) that would include fact sheets about the emergency, contact numbers, employee information and needs, locations of patients, and we’re even looking into the feasibility and legality of posting known names of patients or pictures of patients who cannot be identified. Legalities become much more loose when it’s in an emergency situation, but it’s still something we would need to consider.
This sort of plan might be easy for us, being in a system with rather large hospitals. But I do wonder about the smaller hospitals. I wish this sort of website communication was either state or federally supported, and that way they could manage incoming information from the hospitals themselves. That way all of the information would be in one place instead of, say, a family having to call 5 or 10 different hospitals trying to find their unidentified grandfather. But we all know how likely that sort of a plan is…
Just looking for thoughts on what procedures other organizations have and what you would offer during a time of emergency. I’m not convinced a larger plan would “create more chaos” if it is uniformly and clearly implemented.
Thoughts?
August 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Bloomington Hospital has an information alert homepage ready to go. We have built it into our CMS system so that I can turn it on with one click if we need it – it replaces our homepage. It has no photos and a very limited menu. I have already put in links to all local media and disaster resources, so they are ready. We have built in pages like, how to find a patient during an emergency, etc. that are only offered through the menus on this page. Most of the page is dedicated to space for text updates/copy relating to whatever we need to quickly post.
The process was not too difficult and I am willing to share some of our ideas if anyone wants to connect with me directly.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I love your idea of a ready-made disaster page, waiting in the wings. If you can share that, please do. You can reach me at stokesj@sutterhealth.org. Thanks
Judy
August 17th, 2007 at 8:29 am
I also like that idea, and that’s something we would like to attain. But I do wonder how it fits in well with the rest of your Web site (i.e. do you use a vendor CMS? homegrown? etc.). I’d like to speak further about this, as well, if you don’t mind. tba9816@bjc.org