Hartford Hospital Staff Shines With Caring and Dedication During Chaos of Hurricane IreneHurricane Irene ripped a path through Connecti-cut and other states on the East coast this past weekend, causing widespread destruction, flood-ing, power outages and closings of businesses and schools. But through it all, everyone at Hart-ford Hospital worked closely together to keep pa-tients and staff safe and well-informed.

“Safety and excellence are two of our core val-ues,” said Jeffrey Flaks, president and CEO. “This weekend, Hartford Hospital staff members put both on display in extraordinary ways.”

The planning began well in advance of the storm’s arrival with special ordering of supplies and ensuring that essential medical equipment was connected to back-up power. When safe to do so, inpatient units discharged patients to free up rooms for potential storm victims.

The hospital also provided at-home emergen-cy tips to our staff and launched a web page to provide hospital updates, emergency advice and weather forecasts.

Late Friday, we were contacted by New York University Hos-pital and asked if we could handle two ICU patients. We sent LIFE STAR for one patient and the other was transferred by ambulance. It was tribute to our hospital’s excellence to be asked to respond.

As the storm churned up the East Coast, we put our emergen-cy planning into action. Our Command Center was activated at 3 p.m. Saturday with key leaders on hand. Following pro-tocols that we routinely practice, the Command Center took over control of every aspect of the hospital as the wind and rain increased in velocity and volume.

Hartford Hospital remained fully operational throughout the storm.

The medical and nursing staffs were steadfast despite long hours.

All support services were rock solid. Clinical and non-clinical leaders made a number of key safe-ty-related calls from delaying discharges to keep patients and families off the roads during the height of the storm to closing a number of elevators that are not connected to back-up power.

Throughout the storm, Flaks and other Command Center leaders conducted rounds on the floors and distributed paper updates to staff and patients about all measures under way to support and care for them and concerning the current weath-er and road closures. These updates also were sent electroni-cally via e-mail and posted on Facebook, Twitter and the Hart-ford Hospital external web site.

Incident commander Bimal Patel coordinated information from throughout the hos-pital during the hurricane.

RxTraA publication for the staff of Hartford Hospital August 31, 2011 Vol. 67 No. 33

Nursing leaders Patricia Veronneau and Margaret Julian discuss patient care concerns in the Command Center.

Special Edition

On Sunday, a video message was post-ed on Facebook and on our external web site. (http://www.harthosp.org/aboutus/alerts/default.aspx)

Our experts also contributed to the re-gional media coverage, with Dr. Rocco Orlando, SVP and chief medical officer, and Dr. Jamie Roche, VP, patient safety and quality, both doing phone interviews with local television stations.

When the storm was over, two trees were down on the hospital campus, there were leaks noted in four patient rooms, and more than 100,000 gallons of water were pumped out of the buildings. All of our patients were safe and well cared for.

“Throughout this remarkable response, there were countless examples of ex-emplary teamwork, dedication and re-silience by our staff members,” said Flaks. “I am tremendously grateful for this phenomenal effort and the display of our values in action.”

This is how Hartford Hospital

works.

Need to Get into Hot Water?A number of HH staff members are without power in their homes in the wake of Hurricane Irene. For some, this may make it more difficult to take a shower. There are two options on our campus for those who need to shower:

The Hartford Hospital Fitness Center – The center, located on the ground floor of the Barney Building, at 22 Jefferson Street,

has men’s and women’s locker rooms with showers, soap and towels. The center is open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays.

Access is either through the second floor of the Education Resource Center (ERC) into the Barney Building or from the outside

by entering the side door of the Barney Building located under the fire escape stairs halfway down the driveway.

The ERC/ERD – Several bathrooms with showers are available on the sixth floor-east of the building at 560 Hudson St. These

are available at any time. Soap and towels are not provided. Show the security officer in the ground floor lobby your badge.