Disaster resilience and people with functional needs.

W Hurricane Sandy pummeled the northeast and mid-Atlantic states in October, uprooting trees and causing massive f looding, at least three large hospitals were forced to evacuate after emergency generators failed. Governors of 10 states declared emergencies and requested federal aid. As in the super derecho that swept through the Midwest and mid-Atlantic 4 months earlier, millions of residents were left without power. One alarming consequence of these storms was their effect on residents with functional needs — those who are dependent on home nursing, personal care attendants, or electric medical technologies. Some residents depend on the electrical grid for refrigerating critical medications or for powering lifesaving medical equipment. Many residents, particularly those requiring ongoing respiratory care, streamed into emergency rooms to receive respiratory treatments, refill oxygen tanks, or recharge batteries. Some residents whose medical needs had not escalated but who needed to recharge medical equipment were turned away from shelters whose operators believed their needs could not be met in a general shelter. Through initiatives launched under the Affordable Care Act, our health care system will increasingly enable the 54.4 million Americans with functional needs to remain in their homes and social environments.1 Experts in disaster preparedness highlight the need to build community disaster resilience and reduce long-term vulnerability.2 They also emphasize that having strong systems in place for day-to-day use is essential for dealing with emergency situations.3 With or without a major emergency, the ability of people with functional needs to remain in their community setting depends on a stable electrical grid and a resilient system of service agencies, such as home health and hospice care agencies, personal care assistants, and suppliers of medical equipment. Numerous reports highlight the vulnerability of our physical and social infrastructure4,5; some key policies can help to strengthen them. The first strategy for building community resilience for people with functional needs is to continue to support the development of health information systems. For example, in 2011, using incentive payments authorized under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, converted to electronic health records. Three weeks later, a tornado severely damaged the hospital and forced it to evacuate. Yet dispersed patients continued to obtain prescriptions and receive scheduled treatments because their electronic health records remained accessible. Residents with functional needs also have frequent engagement with nursing homes, independent living facilities, home health agencies, and suppliers of durable medical equipment, many of which continue to rely on paper medical records and forms. Supporting the development of interoperable electronic records for use among these agencies will not only allow them to obtain critical information in the event of a power outage, but also enhance routine coordination of care for people with functional needs. Like smart phones and tablets, which have revolutionized the way people with disabilities communicate, new technologies can also substantially enhance quality of life for residents with functional needs, and they can be lifesaving in the event of a disaster, particularly for residents who cannot easily be moved. Through “innovation challenges” — which can leverage open innovation and the public’s broad knowledge to solve a defined problem — public and private organizations can support the development of technologies that contribute to resilience. Such technologies might include alternative power sources (e.g., manual cranks or batteries powered by human waste) for critical medical equipment, safer home generators, and signaling devices enabled by global positioning systems, which can let medicalequipment suppliers or emergency responders know when critical medical supplies or battery backups are running low. Supporting the development of technologies that enhance social connectedness, which has been shown to improve survival during disasters, can also contribute to community resilience. One such effort is the Lifeline Facebook Application Challenge, sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response of the Department of Health and Human Services, which leverages social media by