State, U.S. ready for disaster? Not exactly, report says
"Ready or Not?? Protecting the Public's Health from Disease, Disasters and Bioterrorism" was released Tuesday by the nonpartisan foundation. It's the fourth preparedness report issued by the group.
"The public believes more is being done and we are better prepared than we are," said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, former assistant secretary for planning and evaluation in the Department of Health and Human Services, during a telephone briefing of reporters early Tuesday. "We have a responsibility to make sure we do, in fact, do what needs to be done."
Utah scored a 6 out of 10 on public health measures such as its hospital surge capacity, its laboratory capability to test for bioterrorism, its flu surveillance system, flu vaccination rates for older citizens, and whether it has a nursing shortage.
Only Oklahoma scored a 10, followed by Kansas with 9. Four states — California, Iowa, Maryland and New Jersey — received only four points.
There were no surprises in Utah's rankings, said Charla Haley, a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Health. One of the frustrations, though, she said, is that the annual report doesn't compare the same measures each year, so it's hard to see whether there's improvement.
Hamburg cited funding as a major roadblock to ongoing preparedness efforts nationwide. Public health agencies, she said, are seeing cuts before their basic preparedness goals are met.
Two of the most important issues, she said, are hospital surge capacity (the ability to care for an usually high number of patients) and the ability to delivery vaccines and medications. Utah failed to meet the foundation's standards in both areas.
"We do have reasonable surge capacity," Haley said. "I don't really think we're all that different from any other state. We'd be fine in the first two weeks of a moderate pandemic. The problem is once it peaks, hospitals will be short because of illness among health-care workers and people who wouldn't come to work because they were afraid of getting sick. And there's the reality of the nursing shortage."
Any elective surgeries would likely have to be put off, she said.
Utah's counting on its Medical Reserve Corps, set up under the auspices of local health departments, to help it manage any kind of large-scale public health event, from huge vaccination clinics to a disaster.
Utah lost a point for not having an electronic disease surveillance system that is compatible with that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Remedying that shortcoming, Haley said, hinges on an allocation of about $800,000 from the Legislature to obtain a compatible system.
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