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April 16, 2012 RSS Feed Print 
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tornado, hurricane or flood, nursing homes are woefully unprepared to protect frail residents in a natural disaster, government investigators say.
Emergency plans required by the government often lack specific steps such as coordinating with local authorities, notifying relatives or even pinning name tags and medication lists to residents in an evacuation, according to the findings.
That means the plans may not be worth the paper they're written on.
Nearly seven years after Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans exposed the vulnerability of nursing homes, serious shortcomings persist.
[Read: Why Nursing Home-Staffing Is Crucial to Health.]
"We identified many of the same gaps in nursing home preparedness and response," investigators from the inspector general's office of the Health and Human Services Department wrote in the report being released Monday. "Emergency plans lacked relevant information. ... Nursing homes faced challenges with unreliable transportation contracts, lack of collaboration with local emergency management, and residents who developed health problems."
The report recommends that Medicare and Medicaid add specific emergency planning and training steps to the existing federal requirement that nursing homes have a disaster plan. Many such steps are now in nonbinding federal guidelines that investigators found were disregarded.
In a written response, Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner agreed with the recommendation, but gave no timetable for carrying it out.
Nationally, more than 3 million people spent at least some time in a nursing home during 2009, according to the latest available data. Nearly 40 percent of them, 1.2 million, were in the top 10 disaster-prone states. The typical nursing home resident is a woman in her 80s or older, dealing with physical and mental limitations that leave her dependent on others for help with basic daily activities.
Investigators pursued a two-track approach. First they looked at the number of nursing homes that met federal regulations for emergency planning and training. Then they went into the field to test how solid those plans were, in a sample of homes drawn from 210 facilities substantially affected by floods, hurricanes and wildfires across seven states during 2007-2010.
On the surface, things appeared to be in good shape. Ninety-two percent of the nation's 16,000 nursing homes met federal regulations for emergency planning, while 72 percent met the standards for emergency training.
A different story emerged when inspectors showed up at 24 selected nursing homes and started pulling files and interviewing staff.
The specific facilities in California, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas were not identified in the report. All had been affected by disasters; 14 had evacuated and the remainder sheltered in place.
A detailed, well-rehearsed emergency plan is a basic requirement for disaster preparedness. But at one home, the emergency plan was in several boxes. At another one, it was on a legal pad.
[Read: Best Nursing Homes 2012: Behind the Rankings.]
Of the 24 emergency plans, 23 did not describe how to handle a resident's illness or death during an evacuation. Also, 15 had no information about specific medical needs of patients, such as feeding tubes and breathing equipment. Seven plans were silent on how to identify residents in an evacuation, such as by attaching wristbands or name tags. Inspectors said 15 made no provision for including medication lists.
None of the nursing homes met a government recommendation for a seven-day supply of drinking water if residents had to shelter in place and their regular source of water was unsafe or unavailable.
Twenty-two had no backup plans to replace staff members unable to report for work during a disaster.
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