Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response

See the following -

HHS Offers Hurricane Guidance to Healthcare Facilities

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | September 13, 2017

With Florida still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Irma, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services has issued draft guidance to help healthcare facilities with disaster planning and recovery for major hurricanes. Based on lessons learned from Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey and others, the document—from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—provides an overview of the “potential significant public health and medical response and recovery needs facing hurricane- and severe storm-affected areas.” Among the topics in the draft are those covering health information management...

Read More »

How Can Hospitals Possibly Prepare for Disasters? With Practice and Planning

The tragic shooting in Orlando brought dozens of victims to emergency rooms. Now, several of those people have been admitted and are clinging to life. Many across the nation are praying for them and other victims. Without quick response and high-quality emergency medical care, many more than the 49 already reported may have died. Emergency room physicians described a scene of horror as wounded patients flooded the nearest hospitals and gurneys lined up in hallways. How do emergency departments deal with such an unpredictable and horrific occurrence?

Read More »

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma Draw the Line - Time for the US to Embrace Open Source Emergency and Disaster Response

For nearly 20 years now the global open source community and applications have been a keystone to disaster relief efforts around the world. The enormous number of disaster relief applications and knowledge that has been developed through all these years, should, and needs to be leveraged in the current crisis. For that reason, Open Health News is starting a series of articles to highlight some of the most important solutions. A substantial portion the open source applications for emergency and disaster response that exist are actually already on the news website in the form of articles and resource pages.

Read More »