By Jesse Wright

Jesse.wright@panews.com

 

Paul Trevino, Southeast Texas region CHRISTUS’ CEO and president, said Hurricane Harvey was an opportunity to learn something for the hospital chain.

For years, the hospital group has been studying storms and how to continue operations during the worst conditions.

“The prpeparation for this storm has been several years in the making,” said Trevino. “After Rita and Ike, our system took some measures to invest in our facilities so we could remain open and viable when storms hit.”

Hospitals face unique challenges because they serve vulnerable people who may depend on electricity and water and who may not be able to be moved to safety. They must also house workers and medical personnel to care for the patients, no matter the weather and no matter how long.

In short, hospitals have to continue to operate as if there were no hurricane or flood.

And, Trevino reports, CHRISTUS managed to do that.

Though not without a snag.

Trevino said that on Aug. 30, Beaumont’s St. Elizabeth campus lost water when the city itself lost water.

“We began to immediately partner with our system and our facility management team and we brought in an auxiliary water system that was built to replicate the water that is consumed on the St. Elizabeth campus and that is 100,000 gallons of water a day,” Trevino said.

He added that Nederland partnered with the hospital to provide water, though small problems persisted with the auxiliary water system, including pressure problems which were not resolved for days.

Nevertheless, Trevino said he expects the medical group to develop a better alternative in case another hospital loses water in the future.

However, none of the hospitals lost power even as the cities surrounding the facilities went black.

Trevino also praised employees, who he said worked long shifts and stayed at the hospital to make sure the patients had proper care. He said some employees braved floods and storm conditions to make it into work and those who could not make it in were covered by workers who stayed well past their shifts.

“They worked double shifts to do everything we could until we could get resources,” he said.

Some of those resources included medical professionals from other CHRISTUS hospitals.

“We had over 100 nurse and other professionals come into our system,” he said. “They came from Lake Charles, Tyler, Alexandria and Texarkana just to name a few places. They came by helicopter by bus by plane and so when they came we were able to relieve our staffs from the double shifts they were working. We had sleeping arrangements and we had a tem working on visiting accommodations. … We initiated food services in our cafeteria and we brought in mobile showers for our staff and we created a recreation are because after a stressful shift its important to get some R and R.”

The employees, who worked, worked hard.

In Beaumont, Trevino said the St. Elizabeth facility had 232 patients in the hospital while area emergency rooms treated over 2,500 people during the storm and in the immediate aftermath.

“Because we were able to stay open people got the care they needed and lives were saved.

Trevino said the success during the storm was all due to preparation prior to the storm. In fact, he said just this week the group finally stopped holding emergency meetings.

Now that the floodwaters have receded, he said he expects to work on preparing for the next big one while also looking at how to help the area.

“The big thing is, one, how can CHRISTUS alleviate some of the suffering that’s occurring throughout Southeast Texas. … We are working closely with the city of Port Arthur and the city of Beaumont and Jefferson County to see what additional things does CHRISTUS need to do to help the people in need. And second, we’re going to have a postmortem of our entire process and take a look at the things that we did well and the things that we could do better.”