A survey by the Medical Group Management Association reveals that U.S. medical practices are not adequately prepared for disasters, and the authors suggest that the federal government should address the problem by funding emergency preparation activities.
The electronic survey, done in July 2008 by the MGMA Center for Research, was sent out to MGMA members enrolled in the Legislative and Executive Advocacy Response Network. The results were released in a poster session at the 2008 MGMA Annual Conference.
Eighty-four percent of survey respondents indicated that their practices have not participated in disaster planning drills with government agencies in the last 12 months, and 71.2 percent of respondents acknowledged that they had not participated in drills with a local hospital in the same period of time.
"This scared the you-know-what out of me and our operations manager," said one anonymous survey respondent.
Sixty-two percent of practices said they had not even engaged in disaster planning drills within their practice in the last year, and 30.2 percent of survey respondents indicated that their practices had no emergency preparedness plan whatsoever.
The polls results are even more disturbing given that 87 percent of survey respondents said there was a "moderate to strong" probability of a disaster occurring in their community within the next five years.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has made $1.1 billion available to assist public health departments, hospitals and other healthcare organizations to strengthen their ability to respond to public health and medical emergencies.
Yet very little money is directed toward medical practices, MGMA noted. The organization says that while government agencies do not offer financial assistance to medical practices in their disaster prevention efforts, they expect them to respond and continue operating in the wake of disaster.
However, the survey revealed that 68 percent of medical practices do not know how to coordinate disaster response actions with federal emergency agencies.
"FEMA has not proven to be reliable during disaster," said one anonymous survey respondent. "I would not feel confident in their assistance with medical offices."
MGMA said that including practices in funded preparation activities would strengthen national disaster preparation, improve recovery efforts and leverage scarce resources.
MGMA's LEARN conducts research on policy issues that impact medical practices through the MGMA-CFR and the MGMA government affairs department. The Idaho State University Institute of Rural Health, and the Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness Program also participated in the research project.