Welina me ke aloha,
I attended a meeting
this week with HSH Administrator Bill May, Windward Community College
Chancellor Doug Dykstra and WCC Vice Chancellor Brian Pactol.
The main reason for the
meeting was to start discussions and brainstorm better and more efficient ways
to notify the community of an escape. We spent some time on background
data and the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) before actually doing any brainstorming.
Data Points
HIPPA prevents the HSH
from releasing to the public, patient information except for a very bland
physical description. Law Enforcement is not bound as tightly under the
HIPAA law and is able to issue a more extensive physical description and
possible threat.
Two concurrent
investigations are underway: A criminal investigation into the escapee's
decision to leave the hospital - which is a felony and carries a 5-year prison
term - and the administrative investigation considering the reasons why over a
10-hour period, HSH employees did not properly report the whereabouts of the
escapee.
The investigations are
being conducted by two separate teams of the state Attorney General’s
office. I have no details as to when they might conclude their work and
have reports available.
Because the
investigations are underway, the HSH is unable to provide any real clarity
about the issue.
Takeaway's
- HSH did not know the patient was missing for almost 10
hours.
- The HSH was not "sitting on the information"
and was not waiting 10 hours to make the proper announcements.
- After the patient was discovered missing by other HSH
employees, the proper notification process started.
- It's significant to me that that seven HSH employees
were placed on administrative leave without pay. I don't believe HSH
would act like this unless they felt there was an exceptional breach of
security protocols.
- Because it took almost ten hours to discover the
patient was missing, the proper notifications to HPD and then to NIXLE
were not made in a timely manner.
- We discussed what an escapee's threat to the community
might be and how it might be announced. - Going back to HIPAA, and
the limited amount of information that might be put out, we discussed that
if a patient left the hospital grounds for whatever reason, that person
had committed a felony and should therefore be deemed dangerous.
That seems to make good sense not to approach an escaped patient and to
notify the proper authority.
- WCC has special circumstances of care since they are
direct neighbors to the HSH. Possible improvements could be:
- enhancements to fencing by creating open but contained
walkways.
- increased fencing heights on the perimeters of the HSH
with better deterrents to climbing.
- use of monitoring devices for those permitted to walk
the grounds.
- using an exercise escape scenario that flex's the
reporting protocols from within the hospital, outward to HPD and Sheriffs
and a "drill" NIXLE alert.
We agreed to meet again soon
– hopefully sooner, if the AG's office completes one or both of the
investigations.
Aloha pumehana,
Mo Radke
Chair, Kāne‘ohe Neighborhood
Board
No comments:
Post a Comment