Health Corps response to hurricanes inadequate

The more than 2,100 officers in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who were deployed to the Gulf Coast to respond to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September 2005 lacked adequate training, and the federal response to the hurricanes did not include an adequate number of nurses, dentists and mental health professionals, according to a report recently compiled by the HHS Office of Inspector General, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.

For the report, HHS OIG surveyed 196 officers who were deployed to the Gulf Coast and 134 who were not deployed about their work during the hurricanes. In the report, HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson wrote, "Most commonly, officers said that the Corps' computerized training ... did little to prepare them for the conditions and situations they encountered during the response," adding, "Officers called for more hands-on training." The report also found that about one in five officers who were not deployed to the Gulf Coast were asked to deploy but could not travel to the area, in many cases because they could not obtain approval from their supervisors (Freking, AP/Houston Chronicle, 2/20). "Agencies were unwilling or unable to allow some officers to deploy, while logistical difficulties delayed others' arrival in the field," according to the report (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 2/20). About half of officers asked to deploy to the Gulf Coast said that they did not receive the request for at least 12 hours after issuance, and about one in seven said that they did not receive the request for more than 72 hours, the report found. According to the report, "More than half of the officers (55%) contacted for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita said the contact method used by the Corps was not ideal." Many officers also incurred expenses related to their deployment to the Gulf Coast, and about one in six of those officers were not reimbursed at the time of the survey, the report found.

Response

John Agwunobi, assistant secretary for health at HHS, in comments attached to the report wrote, "The recommendations of the report mirror many of the preparedness and response areas we are addressing," adding, "The transformed Corps will be better able to deploy officers with the appropriate skill sets required to respond to the wide array of public health emergencies our nation will face." Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, "This report documents what we've already known to be painfully true: When mental health specialists, dentists, nurses and other health professionals were needed most, bureaucratic hurdles got in the way," adding, "We owe it to the people of the Gulf Coast to fix these problems now with the urgency that they deserved then" (AP/Houston Chronicle, 2/20).