Pandemic Influenza Plan - Questar III

Section 3: Healthcare Planning and Emergency Response
• Provide estimates of the quantities of vaccine needed for hospital staff and
patients, as requested by the state health department.
• Develop a stratification scheme for prioritizing vaccination of healthcare
personnel and families who are most critical for patient care and essential
personnel to maintain the day-to-day operation of the healthcare facility.
Antiviral medications may be effective for a particular virus in a pandemic. Hospitals
and practitioners should keep abreast of recommendations from CDC and NYSDOH on
use for treatment vs. prophylaxis (see Section 7: Antiviral Medication Procurement,
Distribution, and Use).
E. Facility Access and Security
Hospitals should determine in advance what criteria and procedures they will use to limit
non-patient access to the facility if pandemic influenza spreads through the community.
Any variation from normal hospital access should be communicated to patients, staff and
visitors.
The hospital should develop criteria or thresholds for temporary closure of the hospital to
new admissions and transfers. The criteria should consider staffing ratios, isolation
capacity, and risks to non-influenza patients. As part of this effort, hospital administrators
should determine who in the hospital will make the request for temporary closings. All
such requests must be forwarded to the NYSDOH Regional Office that has jurisdiction
over the hospital.
The hospital’s Security Annex to their Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan
should include the following:
• Assessment of building for security/access risks.
• A defined method of identification of staff and visitors.
• A plan for enforcement of hospital access by hospital security services. Local
law enforcement should be informed of the plan, however; they might be
overburdened during a pandemic and therefore will have limited ability to assist
healthcare facilities with security services.
• Healthcare facilities should plan for additional security. This may be required
given the increased demand for services, the possibility of long wait times for care
and because triage or treatment decisions may not be in agreement with patient or
family expectations.
F. Hospital Triage and Clinical Evaluation
During a pandemic, hospital emergency departments and outpatient departments may be
overwhelmed with patients seeking care. Therefore, hospitals must review current
procedures for clinical evaluation and admission in order to make them as efficient as
possible, thereby reducing the number of patient encounters. They must develop efficient
systems to: 1) identify patients with pandemic influenza versus the worried well; 2)
physically separate suspect influenza patients from other patients during waiting and
February 7, 2006 3-9