There appears to be panic over the fact that President Obama has declared a national emergency for the pandemic influenza.

This does not mean some new, heightened risk has emerged.

Instead, declaring a national emergency gives the government and workers involved in either rescue (disasters) or treatment, the flexibility to deal with rapidly-changing situations by cutting a lot of red tape.

You may have read about a hospital in California which set up triage tents outside the hospital so that patients could be evaluated without entering the hospital.

That is an example of what is possible in a declared national emergency. Otherwise, setting up tents outside a hospital could get that hospital in big trouble with regulators.

Those who need to be admitted could be taken to the designated area of the hospital. Those who don’t can be given advice and/or medications and sent home.

The benefits of providing hospitals with this kind of flexibility are many and help everyone.

Here are just a few examples.

• The staff is not overwhelmed by a mix of patients, some of whom are very ill and some of whom are not—-many who have no respiratory problems at all. Instead, they have chest pain or an injury. Emergency Rooms already are full to over-flowing in many places. Adding actual and suspected pandemic flu (H1N1) patients to the mix could be the tipping point.

• The patients benefit by not having to wait in the usual mix of emergency patients, either.

• The physical facility has fewer infection control risks to manage, which may be caused by people bringing in community-acquired infections of more than one kind. There also are staph infections which are serious and brought into by hospitals by patients who do not yet know that they have them.

Here is one piece of good news…or good news so far.

• Seasonal flu, a separate strain, does not yet seem to be a problem. That will be good news if that continues to be the case. No one can say for sure whether it will or will not. Many older people are hospitalized in winter for complications of seasonal flu, such as pneumonia. In recent weeks, about 99% of the samples typed by the CDC are pandemic (H1N1) flu. This could change this winter, but the longer we go without any additional, potentially serious strains circulating, the better.

The Washington Post

“President Obama has declared H1N1 swine flu a national emergency, clearing the way for his health chief to give hospitals wider leeway in how they handle a possible surge of new patients, administration officials said Saturday. (Emphasis added)

“The president granted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the power to lift some federal regulations for medical providers, including allowing hospitals to set up off-site facilities to increase the number of available beds and protect patients who are not infected.(Emphasis added)

“Obama said in the declaration that the “rapid increase in illness . . . may overburden health-care resources.” White House officials played down the dramatic language, saying the president’s action did not stem from a new assessment of the dangers the flu poses to the public.

“Instead, officials said the action provides greater flexibility for hospitals that may face a surge of new patients as the virus sweeps through their communities. The declaration allows Sebelius to waive certain requirements under Medicaire and Medicaid, privacy rules and other regulations.” (Emphasis added)

Source: Washington Post, October 25, 2009