THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 27, 1995 TAG: 9510270503
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
To help the disabled in a hurricane, officials need to find them long before a storm threatens.
At a meeting Thursday to discuss a regional disaster plan for sick and disabled people, advocates decided their first goal would be trying to determine who needs their help.
Thanks to philosophical changes in the delivery of care, and cost cutting among health organizations, people who once would have been gathered in central facilities like hospitals are now spread throughout the community.
And so, for instance, there are people on ventilators living at home, depending on daily visits from a home health nurse. People with mental disabilities requiring daily medication may live independently. People who can't drive who use TRT vans to get around.
Some have contact with community groups. Some don't, relying on an informal network of family and friends.
``The people that fall through the cracks are those that are not involved with an agency,'' said Elaine Bull, a representative of Olsten Kimberly QualityCare, a Norfolk home health agency. ``Those are the people we have to identify.''
The meeting yesterday at the Endependence Center in Norfolk gathered two dozen health officials, emergency services coordinators, medical agencies and groups that help the disabled and elderly. It was an early step in a process organizers expect will take a year.
The group is looking not only at physical handicaps like blindness and mental disabilities like mental retardation. They're also concerned with the health of the elderly, and with people under routine, crucial medical care, like those who receive dialysis.
Devising a plan will be complicated. For instance, some suggested using hospitals as shelters for people with serious problems that don't usually require hospitalization.
Easier said than done, said Sharon Ward, disaster chairman for Sentara Health System's southside hospitals. At Sentara Norfolk General, for instance, the main emergency generator is on the first floor, where it could be vulnerable to flooding. There are other back-up generators elsewhere, but they can't maintain the whole complex, and taking on extra people would be a bad idea.
Before Felix, for instance, Sentara tried to discharge as many people as could safely leave the hospital.
And hospitals would need to know if they could get reimbursed by insurance companies for the people who use the facility as a kind of super-equipped disaster shelter, said Dr. Valerie Stallings, Norfolk health director.
James Talbot, Norfolk's deputy coordinator of emergency services, warned the agencies that they'll be working with limited staff. In disasters, he said, probably 30 to 40 percent of their key staffers will chose to leave town with their families. by CNB