U.S. nearly triples hospital disaster funding

The federal government is giving a big boost to Central Pennsylvania hospitals and their efforts to prepare for emergencies and disasters.

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration recently awarded the Pennsylvania Department of Health a $19 million grant to help hospitals prepare

Hospitals struggling financially because of issues such as labor shortages and rising medical-malpractice insurance costs will welcome the increased funding, said Cheri Rinehart, vile president of integrated delivery systems for the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania in Swatara Township, Dauphin County. Some of these hospitals have not been able to spend as much on preparedness as they want, Rinehart said.

Michael Huff of the state Department of Health agreed. The department is administering the grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services.

"We have a health care system that we have an opportunity to improve and enhance," said Huff, director of the department's Bureau of Community Health Systems and acting director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness.

Rinehart said $9.3 million of the federal money would go directly to the roughly 180 general hospitals in Pennsylvania that have emergency departments. The Department of Health will use the rest of the money for statewide efforts to improve hospitals' preparedness.

Each eligible hospital will receive a base amount of funding plus about 80 cents for each emergency room visit recorded in 2002, Rinehart said.

The base amount is growing from $5,000 last year to $30,000 this year.

Hospitals used last year's money for a variety of preparedness efforts, Huff said.

Those efforts included developing emergency response plans, purchasing personal protective equipment, training staff and improving communication systems. This year's funding is designed to help hospitals build on those efforts and to focus more on regional planning, Huff said.

Rinehart said working on a regional level is important because it improves communications between hospitals and prevents unneeded duplication of preparedness efforts.

The hospital association is helping to develop regional preparedness plans that would cover hospitals statewide.

The plans are expected to be ready for use by the end of July 2004.

"No individual hospital will be able to handle a large event on its own," Rinehart said.

Representatives of several area hospitals said they did not know how much funding their hospitals were getting and, therefore, did not want to speculate about how they might use the money.

The extra money will be helpful to hospitals as they work to enhance their ability to respond to terrorism, disasters and public health emergencies, said Joe Barron, director of safety and security for Memorial Hospital in Spring Garden Township, York County. Barron said Memorial might spend additional funding on efforts, such as increasing the mobility of the hospital's communications system, purchasing more decontamination equipment and increasing supplies of prescription drugs that might be in high demand during an emergency.

"We're always looking at how we can better protect ourselves," he said.