One site that you’d like to be up and running smoothly in case of an emergency is the emergency room itself. Hospitals play a key role during disasters and, as the extreme weather conjured up by climate change begins to take its toll on the built environment, health-care facilities need to be retrofitted and redesigned in ways that can stand up to mother nature’s fury. That way, the essential job of caring for patients can continue, even in the midst of a hurricane or flood.
Partners HealthCare, a nonprofit hospital and physicians network in New England, has made this the heart of its mission, as it works to deploy resilience measures across its more than 30 facilities, including existing hospitals and offices, as well as new facilities. Engineering.com reached out to Dr. Paul Biddinger of the Partners HealthCare network to learn what such a massive plan looks like.
Biddinger is the director of the Center for Disaster Medicine and vice chairman for emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, as well as the medical director for emergency preparedness at Partners HealthCare. He explained that the project is being enacted in three phases. Phase I of the project included outlining every climate vulnerability the sites had, which was followed by a phase dedicated to understanding solutions to those vulnerabilities. The last phase, to be completed in September 2018, will see how these solutions can be best put into action.
Spaulding…