Hospital ERs Are Unprepared for Terror Attack

May 5, 2008— -- The nation's emergency rooms and hospitals are still, nearly seven years after Sept. 11, not prepared to deal with the "surge" of patients that could be caused by a terror attack, according to a House oversight committee.

What's worse is that it's a situation that could be compounded, hospital officials from both coasts and a state disaster planner said today, if the Bush administration is able to take hundreds of millions in Medicaid funding from public and teaching hospitals.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the changes the Bush administration is trying to make in the way the government reimburses state and local governments for the services provided by public and teaching hospitals could be "disastrous" to the nation's preparedness for a terror attack and called them an abdication of responsibility.

Waxman's oversight committee conducted a survey of 34 hospitals on March 25 and found that not one was prepared at that moment on that day for a terror attack.

"The situation in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles was particularly dire. There was no available space in the emergency rooms at the main trauma centers serving Washington, D.C. One emergency room was operating at over 200 percent of capacity: more than half the patients receiving emergency care in the hospital had been diverted to hallways and waiting rooms for treatment. And in Los Angeles, three of the five Level I trauma centers were so overcrowded that they went 'on diversion,' which means they closed their doors to new patients. If a terrorist attack had occurred in Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles on March 25 when we did our survey, the consequences could have been catastrophic. The emergency care systems were stretched to the breaking point and had no capacity to respond to a surge of victims."

Waxman said the federal government, by implementing the new Medicaid regulations, could have a "devastating effect on preparedness" because it will take hundreds of millions in funding from public and teaching hospitals.