Insights: Disaster Planning Crucial for Medical Practices in Path of Destruction

In this episode of the MGMA Insights podcast, we’re joined by Bob Bush, Vice President of Business Development & Physician Services at the University of Kansas Health System St. Francis Campus. Just over a year removed from helping Panama City’s Bay Medical Sacred Heart through the devastation of Hurricane Michael, Bush is well-versed in disaster management. He sat down with podcast host Daniel Williams during MGMA’s 2019 Annual Conference in New Orleans to share his insights on preparing and executing a disaster plan. Don’t quite have time to listen to the entire episode? No worries. We’ve compiled a handful of highlights from Bush’s interview for your convenience: • (3:38) “A disaster could be a snowstorm. It could be a rain. It could be a tornado. It could be a hurricane. Could be earthquakes. But it also could be something more like all of a sudden you lose connectivity to your hard drive, so you lose all your patient charts or you have a fire or there’s a flood … so, disasters, it could be a lot of different things for a lot of different situations. But the thing that you have to continue to look at is what can you do to be preparing for those things and how do you minimize the impact on your practice when those disasters happen?” • (19:50) “We couldn’t get tied up with the emotional distraught of what was going around us. We had a job to do. We had to take care of our patients. We had to get them out of the facility safely. We had to take care of the other people in our facility. And that was our focus.” Here are some links and references related to this week’s show: * After Michael, damaged hospital preps for patients (VIDEO) (bit.ly/2pS1EdP) * How robust is your practice’s emergency planning and disaster preparedness? (bit.ly/2MPd5ff) * Bay Medical Sacred Heart Hurricane Michael (VIDEO) (bit.ly/31LDHSw) * As Florence bears down on East Coast, a reminder to medical groups to be prepared for disaster (bit.ly/2pOQ1nZ) * When disaster strikes, does your practice have a plan in place? (bit.ly/2MLsT2s) If you like the show, please rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (apple.co/368IdOB), Google Play (bit.ly/2paMqAJ), Spotify (spoti.fi/2Nwu59p), Stitcher (bit.ly/2NmAF1M) or countless other platforms to make sure you never miss an episode. We love hearing from listeners about the show. If you have topics you’d like us to cover or experts you’d like us to interview, email us at podcasts@mgma.com or reach out to MGMA Sr. Editor and podcast host Daniel Williams on Twitter at @MGMADaniel.