200 reporters surround your hospital: Are you prepared for a disaster?
October 1, 1996 7 minutes read
200 reporters surround your hospital: Are you prepared for a disaster?
Olympic bombing puts Atlanta risk managers in high gear
Imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call alerting you to a terrorist bombing downtown. You know your hospital will be the main treatment center for the victims, so the code orange will be activated and your clinical staff will fly into high gear.
If you’re prepared for such an incident, you’ll fly, too. Risk management may seem far removed from the urgent care of bombing victims, but in fact, a high-profile incident will pose special risks and obligations. Are you ready?
Georgia Baptist Medical Center was ready when a bomb exploded in Atlanta’s Centennial Park during the Olympics. A total of four hospitals in Atlanta treated the 111 victims of the pipe bomb that blew up at 1:27 a.m. July 27. One woman was killed by the bomb blast, and a Turkish cameraman suffered a fatal heart attack while rushing to the scene.
All of the hospitals faced special risk management concerns, but Georgia Baptist may have faced the biggest challenge. The hospital admitted the 14-year-old daughter of the woman who died in the attack, and that girl quickly became the focus of the hordes of media in town for the games. In addition to reporting on the girl’s recovery, the media were attracted to the many celebrities who visited the girl in the hospital.
"That was one of the most interesting and challenging days I have faced," recalls Deana Allen, director of corporate risk services at Georgia Baptist.
Media must be managed
One of Allen’s first concerns was security. Responsible for both risk management and hospital security, she recognized immediately that the media crush would create overlapping concerns in those areas. Managing the media is a risk management concern because reporters can deliberately or inadvertently invade the privacy of hospital patients, she explains. The hospital has an obligation to protect patients’ privacy, and standard precautions may not be sufficient in extraordinary circumstances. If the hospital allows media to take pictures or obtain names without consent, for instance, the victims easily could sue the hospital for allowing it.
The media were at Georgia Baptist for about a week, the same time that the 14-year-old patient was being treated. The primary task in managing the media was to keep the reporters and photographers contained in one area and not roaming around the hospital.
"One thing we did extremely well was to set up a media center across the street in our cancer center," Allen says. "We were able to handle them well 98% of the time. That gave us much more control than having them right on the premises."
Having the media set up across the street solved several risk management problems. First, they were not crowded around the emergency room entrance trying to take pictures of patients or talk to grieving relatives. Second, they weren’t getting run over by ambulances or creating traffic jams at the emergency entrance not a minor concern. And third, reporters had to make much more of an obvious attempt to get into the hospital.
One key to keeping the media where you want them is to give them things. Provide food, phones, information, anything that placates them and helps them do their jobs.
In addition to physically managing the media, the hospital had to control access to patient information. (For more on protecting privacy, see story, p. 124.)
And remember that many of these risk management concerns may apply when there is only a single high-profile patient at your hospital rather than a code orange involving multiple casualties. A victim of a sensational crime, for instance, or a celebrity may bring the same media attention.
Another point: It’s not just reporters you will be managing. Crime and disaster victims also attract a flood of attorneys who want to be first in line to offer their services.
A risk manager from another Atlanta-area facility warns that you must not underestimate the need to rein in the media. When Kennestone Hospital in Marietta became the main treatment center for a commercial airplane crash several years ago, the hospital was swamped with reporters and photographers arriving at the same time as patients.
Lessons learned from air crash
Hospital administrators learned valuable lessons in that incident, says Sam Bishop, ARM, director of risk management for Promina Northwest Health System, the Atlanta company that includes Kennestone Hospital. At the time of the air crash, Bishop was risk manager at Kennestone.
"It was unbelievable," Bishop says. "We tried to set up a media room and relay the information, but that didn’t work because they wanted to be right at the action. We even had some reporters put on white smocks and try to get into the treatment areas."
Bishop now advises setting up a media area as close to the action as possible, so they will be satisfied but still in a well-controlled area that does not allow indiscriminate photography or patient contact. A location outside the hospital is preferable.
The more newsworthy the event, the more the media will become aggressive, combative, and willing to ignore your instructions. This is not a time for weakness or being overly polite. Respect the fact that the reporters are doing their jobs, but remember that you have a very important role in protecting the hospital and its patients.
"You’ve got to make sure they do not interfere in any way whatsoever with patient care or privacy," Bishop explains. "We would go to the Nth degree if necessary to make sure the media does not do that. We will bring in security and do what is necessary."
There is the danger of being too tough with the media, which inevitably will lead to bad publicity for the hospital and even more serious charges of interfering with the press. Preparation is the key, Bishop and Allen stress. If you are unprepared for the day you find 100 reporters at the door, you are more likely either to fold up and let them have free reign or overreact and turn 100 reporters into 100 angry reporters.
"Any negative publicity will develop mistrust in the community, and that can lead to more questions about the quality of your services later on," Bishop notes. "That’s why this is much more than just a security issue."
Bishop points out that true confrontations with the media are more likely when the event is big enough to draw in the national media. Ideally, your hospital’s risk management and media relations departments will be familiar and friendly with local reporters so there is more cooperation. Remember, however, that any hospital instantly can become the focus of national media attention. After all, a plane can crash in anyone’s backyard.
Though both Bishop and Allen warn that you must not let the media run amok, they add that a little TLC can make the unruly mob a lot more cooperative. As much as you can, provide the media with what they need to make their jobs a bit easier. In your media center, for instance, provide many phones and incidentals like paper and pens.
"We tried to emphasize that we were not trying to keep them in the dark or deny any access, even though we had to control them," Allen says. "We would take them coffee and soft drinks. The media collected a lot of Olympic pins they wanted to give to the injured girl, and we made sure we delivered them with the best wishes of the reporters."
If you can’t beat ’em, compromise
After the airplane crash, Kennestone hospital set up a controlled area near the hospital’s helipad so photographers could get action shots that would not identify the patients. That was a good compromise that gave the media what they needed while still providing a great deal of control.
The risk management department should work closely with media relations during such a crisis. Risk management and security may have to play the role of the tough guys saying, "No, you can’t come in here" and "No, you can’t have that information." It is good to have the media relations staff work as the liaison and try to smooth ruffled feathers.
Again, planning is the key. A crisis is not the time to go downstairs and introduce yourself to the media relations folks.
A high-profile patient or incident may bring with it highly unusual tasks that fall under the purview of the risk manager. At Georgia Baptist, for instance, Allen was faced with figuring out how to get the 14-year-old Olympic bombing victim out of the hospital without attracting media attention. That’s not an everyday part of a risk manager’s job, but Allen saw it as her duty to protect the girl’s privacy until she was completely away from the hospital.
"The family wanted no pictures whatsoever, so we went through some elaborate arrangements to get her out," Allen says. "It was entirely successful. The media didn’t know until she was completely gone."
Allen is reluctant to divulge her secrets for how she got the girl out, but she hints that it involved delicate timing and a very circuitous route. Allen accompanied the girl herself.
Even before her discharge, Allen coordinated a similar departure so the girl could visit the Dream Team downtown. Though she received many VIP visitors at the hospital, the U.S. Olympic basketball team would have created an unmanageable commotion. During this elaborate ruse, the hospital CEO accompanied the girl.
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