Gulf Coast Hospital
Gulf Coast Hospital (GCH) is a 350-bed facility that is located in the heart of New Orleans, Louisiana. Louisiana is located on the gulf coast of the United States. The gulf coast is subject to severe storms including hurricanes. On August 29, 2005, Louisiana was struck by Hurricane Katrina. The flooding from Katrina destroyed most of the patient files stored in the basement of the facility. Measures were put into place prior to the catastrophic event that allowed patients to obtain their medical records to be treated at another facility and to help with the identification process of those who lost their lives. These measures will be discussed in detail in this paper.
Management Plan
Plans should be in place …show more content…

49). Emergency Support Function #8 (ESF-8) is the health and medical services function. EST-8 provides medical, mental health, preventative health, and environmental services to those affected by a major disaster (Knouss, 2001).
The months following Hurricane Katrina were filled with reconstruction of the facility and dispersing medical information to outlying facilities to provide care for those displaced. Information was retrieved from the outlying facility and placed on electronic media such as flash drives. The flash drives were sent to the other facilities, given to emergency response teams to identify victims or to patients or family members. During this difficult time, each employee continued to follow the code of conduct set forth by the hospital.
Code of Conduct
 Gulf Coast Hospital workforce members should disseminate information only to individuals with a “need to know” and should protect information from access by unauthorized personnel.
 Upon termination of employment, an individual may not copy, take or retain any documents containing Gulf Coast Hospital restricted information. The prohibition against disclosing restricted information extends beyond the