The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

Russell Phillips & Associates (RPA) announced January 30 it has been awarded a contract to complete catastrophic surge and evacuation assessments for 60 hospitals by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response.

PeaceHealth St. John, in Longview, was included in their contract. Project completion is estimated for mid-February.

The project includes surge capacity, transportation evacuation planning, and a ‘categories of care’ resource tool to support decision-making processes. This follows a survey of 44 hospitals in the state over 2015/16.

RPA has had a long-standing collaborative relationship with Washington State hospitals and nursing homes, commencing in a 2009 project when RPA wrote Hospital and Long-term Care Evacuation Mutual Aid Plans for Pierce and King Counties. In 2010 – 2012, the next phase of projects took place for surge capacity planning in Pierce and King Counties and Mutual Aid Planning in Region 1. This culminated in a 2015 and 2016 project for the Northwest Healthcare Response Network and Washington State DOH to address regional disaster planning for 44 hospitals in the State (including the majority of the Disaster Medical Coordinating Center hospitals). As part of this new project, every clinical and procedural area at the final sixty (60) hospitals will be assessed to determine their specific surge capacity in the event of a disaster.