HJNO Nov/Dec 2020

36 NOV / DEC 2020 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS LDH CORNER homes utilized their own contracts to safe- ly evacuate and shelter their residents. In prior storms, it was not uncommon to have nursing homes rely heavily on the Nation- al Guard and state-contracted resources to evacuate nursing home residents. The Lou- isiana Nursing Home Association and the Louisiana Hospital Association deserve a tre- mendous amount of credit for assisting with situational awareness, messaging and coor- dination of resources throughout all phases of the storms. The investments made in these public-private partnerships ensured that vul- nerable populations were evacuated in ad- vance of the storm and that resources were strategically placed to enable patient move- ment. These facilities were ready to move, Over the last several years, the Louisiana Department of Health has invested heavily in relationship-building and planning exer- cises with healthcare leaders and local of- ficials. Together, we have been gaming out every possible scenario, including planning for rapid-spreading pandemics and destruc- tive hurricanes. Those investments paid off this year after the two ferocious storms, Hur- ricanes Laura and Delta, struck Southwest Louisiana inAugust and October. The fierce winds Laura brought at landfall knocked out power over a vast swath of the state and took down dozens of water systems, forcing the evacuation of 14 hospitals and 11 nurs- ing homes. For the 2020 storms, the at-risk nursing “That’s just 2020,”we often found ourselves saying in the state’s emergency management circles, where our years of preparations and lessons learned from previous experience were tested over and over again. It’s been a devastating and tragic year for Louisiana residents who have lost more than 5,500 of their own to COVID-19—the deadliest year for Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina took the lives of 1,500 state residents that fateful August 15 years ago. This number is startling and heartbreaking, but we also know that dedicated front-line healthcare workers and emergency manage- ment professionals across the state are doing everything they can to protect the health and well-being of our residents. COLUMN LDH CORNER Navigating a Year Full of Disasters In the year of a once-a-century pandemic, it just figured that Louisiana would also fall under threat of six hurricanes, two of which hit in almost exactly the same place.