By Danielle Ameden/Daily News staff
GHS
Mon Sep 24, 2007, 10:41 PM EDT
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Milford -
Blaire House's Martha Mancuso used to worry about how chaotic it would be getting her senior patients and their medications safely evacuated, kept together and accounted for during an emergency.
That concern, however, now is history.
Today, the Claflin Street rehabilitation center will pioneer the use of a product Mancuso and Milford Fire Chief John Touhey helped develop: A sealable, 16-by-16-inch plastic bag for medication and personal belongings that comes with a dosage sheet and ID wristlet to match patients with their bags.
Called SECUR-ID EVAC, the kit would be purchased for each patient and pulled out should an emergency hit home.
"In those cases, time is of the essence," Touhey said. "It's just bang, bang, throw things together and off you go," he said of the new system. "It's keeping everything together - that's the key. Being able to do that, we continue care for the patients."
Manufactured by a Los Angeles company called For Responders, the product is being marketed throughout the country and Canada this week but used first at Blaire House, where there's a kickoff event this morning.
It was modeled after the plastic bag system Milford responders use for containing patients' personal belongings with their Mass Decontamination Unit - the tent pitched during disaster training exercises, including the one in August at Milford Regional Medical Center.
Touhey started meeting last winter with Mancuso, and representatives from other local nursing homes and the hospital to discuss evacuation procedures. With no plans in place, he said, " 'Gee, we have a product that we use in the community in case we had an emergency,' " Mancuso recalled.
"There was the birth of the idea to create a product that would work for nursing facilities," said Mancuso, Blaire House's executive director.
"I don't want to call you 'Sparky,' but a spark is what starts a fire," For Responders President AJ McNamara told Touhey at a presentation yesterday in Worcester Fire Chief Gerard Dio's office.
"He solved the problem," McNamara said to Dio, first vice president of the state Fire Chiefs Association, presenting a $500 check for the association's professional development fund in honor of Touhey's idea.
"John is always thinking," said Dio.
The kit includes a small, bubble wrap bag for dentures and hearing aids, space for a change of clothes and tamper-resistant stickers to secure the contents, protecting a patient's privacy. Also included is a zip-tie label that could be attached to wheelchairs.
"Seeing the final result, I think it's great," Mancuso said. "It'll more than take care of what we need to do to safeguard patients records and their privacy in the event that we have to evacuate."
A medication list would be completed for each patient by a nursing home staff member or emergency responder. Medications, dosages and quantities for each drug would be listed, and a witness would sign off on their form.
"There was no system before this," said Touhey, thinking back to Hurricane Katrina when victims, never mind their medications, went missing. "There were people looking for their loved ones for days."
With the kit, when an emergency responder moves a patient to a temporary shelter, a "transporter's receipt" is filled out and torn off from the bottom of the bag. Returned to a safe spot, that plastic slip confirms a patient was taken there and can be used for tracking patients.
Mancuso thought back to July when Blaire House's sister home in Dartmouth was evacuated.
"It became very clear how important this particular type of tool would be," she said. "There's a danger of residents' records being lost and separated from them. That can create chaos for a patient because everything about what they need for medications and care is ... in those records."