Welcome to Boone County Hospital

Disruption of Services Procedure

POLICY:
In the event a disruption of services should occur at the hospital or the intent of the discontinuance or disruption of services due to a fire, power outage or other calamity that causes damage to the facility or threatens the safety or welfare of patients or clients, the following procedures are to be immediately followed.

PROCEDURE:
The Chief Executive Officer will be notified immediately and will report to the hospital to assume responsibility for the transfer of patients.

The Chief Executive Officer and Human Resources Director will attempt to secure necessary staffing from other hospitals, nursing registries, temporary employment services and other sources available.

Department managers and staff will be responsible for notifying all patients' physicians and families of the imminent closure of the hospital, and will determine from the physicians' orders whether patients may be discharged or transferred to another facility.

Those patients who may be discharged will wait in the hospital for families to escort them home.

For those patients requiring transfer, contact will be made with area hospitals to determine the availability of bed space.

Ambulance companies will be notified to be ready for evacuation of non-ambulatory patients.

Police Department will be notified.

Information Management will be responsible for obtaining the signature of patients on authorization forms to release all medical records to the receiving hospital.

The attending physician of the patient will assume the responsibility of obtaining temporary privileges at the receiving hospital or transferring care of his/her patient to an attending physician at that hospital.

The Business Office will be responsible for forwarding all insurance information to the receiving hospitals.

All department managers will be responsible for securing their areas, and maintaining 8-hour per day vigils within the hospital rotating weekends.

Administration will be responsible for hiring security personnel to patrol our buildings 24 hours per day - 7 days a week.

Notification to outside agencies will be the responsibility of the administrative offices. Those notified include, but are not limited to, the following: Department of Health, Office of Emergency Services, Licensing Bureau and Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, etc.

All entrances will be re-keyed immediately. The responsibility to contact the lock company is the Director of Engineering or designee.

US Patent Numbers 7,720,998 B2, 7,836,207