Development of an Evacuation Tool to Facilitate Disaster Preparedness: Use in a Planned Evacuation to Support a Hospital Move

Our institution relocated to a new facility 3.5 miles from our original location in Chicago on June 9, 2012. We describe the tools we developed to prepare, execute, and manage our evacuation and relocation. Tools developed for the planned evacuation included the following: level of acuity and team c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Disaster medicine and public health preparedness 2017-08, Vol.11 (4), p.479-486
Main Authors: Rozenfeld, Ranna A., Reynolds, Sally L., Ewing, Sherri, Crulcich, Mary Margaret, Stephenson, Michelle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Catheters
Checklist - methods
Checklist - standards
Chicago
Civil Defense - methods
Concepts in Disaster Medicine
Disaster Planning - methods
Disasters
Emergency preparedness
Evacuation
Health Facility Moving - methods
Health Facility Moving - standards
Humans
Pandemics
Patient Transfer - methods
Pediatrics
Public health
Relocation
Ventilators
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Summary:Our institution relocated to a new facility 3.5 miles from our original location in Chicago on June 9, 2012. We describe the tools we developed to prepare, execute, and manage our evacuation and relocation. Tools developed for the planned evacuation included the following: level of acuity and team composition classification, patient departure checklist, evacuation handoff tool, and a patient tracking system within the electronic health record. Incident Command structure was utilized. Monthly census tracking exercises were held beginning 12 months before the evacuation. Simulation drills began 6 months before the evacuation. The entire evacuation took less than 14 hours and there were no safety issues. A total of 127 patients were transported to the new facility: 45 patients were moved via the Neonatal/Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team, and the rest were moved with various team configurations. Documents developed for a planned evacuation can be used for any planned or unplanned evacuation. We believe the tools we used to prepare, execute, and manage our evacuation and relocation would assist any health care facility to be better prepared to safely and efficiently evacuate patients in the event of a disaster, or to create surge capacity, and relocate them to another facility. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:479-486).
ISSN:1935-7893
1938-744X
DOI:10.1017/dmp.2016.154