The night the lights went out in New Hyde Park
Will your Y2K contingency plan work as designed?
When news of a power blackout at a Long Island medical center in March hit an on-line bulletin board relating to year 2000 (Y2K) topics, the messages began to fly. Health information managers and other hospital personnel responsible for Y2K testing and planning wanted details: Was the outage due to a computer malfunction? Was patient care compromised? How did staff respond to the unexpected crisis?
Implicit was the question: Could this happen to us, too? Luckily, the incident was not Y2K-related, but it does underscore the importance of considering how all components of a Y2K contingency plan work together in case of an emergency.
The health information management department reported no problems with medical records or payment information as a result of the blackout.
Long Island Jewish Medical Center (LIJ) in New Hyde Park, NY, for example, thought its emergency generators would turn on in case of a power outage. But it didn’t expect the outage to also affect the trigger mechanism for the generators.
Dancing in the dark
The blackout happened at 5:58 p.m. on a Wednesday evening when two of three divisions of the LIJ suddenly went dark. LIJ is a 829-bed voluntary, nonprofit, tertiary care teaching hospital. Its three divisions include Long Island Jewish Hospital for adult care, Schneider Children’s Hospital for pediatrics, and Hillside Hospital for psychiatric care. Hillside was not affected by the blackout.
The medical center had four emergency generators in place to begin operating in case of a power blackout. They failed to turn on once the power went out, and the scramble to secure 527 patients began.
Everyone in the medical center responded according to its in-house emergency disaster plan, says Ellen Mitchell, a community relations spokeswoman for LIJ.
"Staff remained on [duty], and others came in to help as word spread through the media. The hospital immediately established a command post and was in constant communication with all areas of the hospital [since] telephone communication was not affected."
Staff immediately put battery-powered lights and equipment into use, Mitchell says. According to news reports, about 55 patients were on electrically powered ventilators at the time of the outage. The ventilators had battery power, but some manual assistance was needed to keep the machines working at a proper level. Surgeons completed two ongoing procedures under battery-powered lights.
Staff placed extra blankets on babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, and medical residents used ice to keep the blood in the blood bank fresh.
No patient injuries were reported, and staff — from doctors to housekeepers — were later commended for responding quickly to the emergency and for staying calm. In 47 minutes, the power returned, but the search for the cause of the outage continued in earnest.
At the time of the blackout, a crew for the local utility company, Consolidated Edison, was working on one of four 27,000-volt power "feeder" lines outside the hospital.
"The hospital’s emergency generator system relies upon the operation of at least two of four feeder cables that come into the medical complex on Consolidated Edison lines," Mitchell explains. "At first it was thought that the Con Ed work interrupted the operation of only two of the feeder cables."
In its work, the crew had turned off one of the feeder cables. However, it also interrupted the operation of two more feeder cables and not only turned off the electricity, but turned off the start-up mechanism for the emergency generator, as well.
The medical center has since replaced the trigger mechanism that failed that night. The incident has also resulted in LIJ and Consolidated Edison establishing a new policy that takes affect any time work is being done on or around the hospital premises.
"Both the hospital and the utility company will have overseers on site and in constant communication," Mitchell says. "Prior to any work commencing, the hospital’s emergency backup generator system will be turned on, so that if a cable is inadvertently put out of commission, the emergency system will already be in place."
Other than the improved communication, Mitchell says the medical center sees no reason to alter its emergency disaster plan. "It worked as was," she says.
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