Home Health & Hospice Week

Although the home care industry hardly needed it, HHAs and hospices got another reminder to keep their disaster plans ready to go when Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast.

Many HHAs, their staff, and patients were devastated by the hurricane and resulting flooding, reports the Home Care Association of New York State. After having his own home and vehicle destroyed and evacuating family, neighbors and pets, LPN Steve Schlamowitz walked nearly two miles to go to work at the Visiting Nurse Service (VNS) of Schenectady and Saratoga Counties, HCANYS says.

HCR Home Care's Schoharie office staff notified patients of evacuation orders and helped one patient coordinate evacuation after a foot of water blocked his door, before having its own office hit by flooding, HCANYS says. Many nurses and aides worked at a shelter in Cobleskill, N.Y. After unsuccessfully trying to get medical supplies to the shelter by road, HCR nurses Vivian Thurber and John Driessen got a ride with a National Air Guard Black Hawk helicopter to deliver the supplies, the trade group relates.

And in New York City where public transit was shut down, Home Assistance Personnel Inc. home health aide Morna Harvey walked 20 deserted blocks in a downpour to reach her client with dementia, HCANYS reports. The client was injured by a falling TV and had to be moved to the hospital, where Harvey accompanied her.

In hard-hit Vermont, the Rutland Area Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice had staffers hike six and seven miles to make it into work past closed roads, reports the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. And several of its clinicians, stranded by the storm, helped clean up, deliver water, food, medication and medical care. RAVNAH physical therapist Suanna Bicek was isolated in Pittsfield after the storm and volunteered at the food station supplied by Federal Emergency Management Agency helicopters.

Melissa Dickinson, an RN for the Hospice and Palliative Care Team in Berlin, Vt., got stranded by flood waters after her last visit of the day and had to spend the night in her car, NAHC relates. Hospice chaplain Cindy Yee was evacuated to a shelter and spent the night comforting her fellow shelter residents.

More details about the hurricane's impact on New York HHAs are online at www.hca-nys.org/documents/asap090211specialedition.pdf.