Massive phone service loss offers a good drill scenario
Tip Of The Week, September 26, 2007
A real-life incident in Texas may provide some fodder to escalate your emergency management exercise scenarios.
Last week, a construction worker in Hays County, TX, was attacked by bees, which inadvertently caused the victim to hit a lever on a vehicle that lowered an auger into the ground. The auger sliced into a phone company line, knocking out land-based and cell phone service for 130,000 customers for about seven hours, reported the Austin American-Statesman.
Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos lost its long-distance phone service, making it hard to contact some employees, the hospital's president told the American-Statesman. Hospital clinicians also had to revert to paper recordkeeping after the electronic medical records system went down.
Hospital officials concluded that the phone outage was a good chance to practice emergency response plans, but had it been a long-term loss of service, things would have gotten more challenging to handle.
Communication loss is an interesting idea to add to your own drills, particularly as a new twist to scenario that is already underway.
Most Popular
- Articles
-
- HIPAA Q&A: Flu shot requirement for hospital employees
- HealthDataInsights posts new issues for medical necessity claims
- Running an effective peer review committee meeting
- Q&A: Incidental disclosures and patient privacy
- New FAQ posted on storing laryngoscope blades
- Sneak Peek: Effort underway to establish caseload benchmarks
- Tip: Perform your own internal investigation prior to government audit
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- HIPAA 5010 deadline extended, but threat remains, says AMA
- HHS task force: Consider privacy, security with text messages
- E-mailed
-
- Running an effective peer review committee meeting
- HIPAA Q&A: Flu shot requirement for hospital employees
- What does case-mix index mean to you?
- Featured blog post: Nurses face felony charges after reporting physician to the Texas Medical Board
- HHS task force: Consider privacy, security with text messages
- Tip: Correctly code bilateral pain management procedures
- 2012 CPT code changes for ASCs: Shoulder and knee scopes and pain management
- COT basics to best
- Documentation and coding for toxic metabolic encephalopathy
- Guidance and tact key to compliant, effective physician queries
- Searched