September 1, 2005

Dear Colleagues:

Johns Hopkins will participate in the ongoing, nationwide effort to assist in responding to the medical emergency following the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region.

Under a preliminary plan being developed by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), all local medical volunteer efforts are to be coordinated by their respective state's hospital association. The Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) and senior Hopkins officials are in contact with the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) to determine what type of medical and nursing personnel we may be asked to provide for this volunteer effort.

HHS hopes to organize 40 medical shelters, each with 250 beds and staffed with 100-person medical teams, to stabilize hospital patients in preparation for transferring them to facilities outside the flooded region. At this time it remains unclear what medical personnel will play a voluntary role in this plan. HHS hopes to open the first such shelter by this Friday and the remainder over the next two weeks.

CEPAR requests that any JHMI personnel interested in volunteering to go to a flood-stricken area not do so independently, but wait until MHA completes its initial plan and clarifies Hopkins' role. Until the need in the stricken area is better understood, it is best for volunteers not to go there on their own. To do so could impede a coordinated response and would interfere with ongoing local response efforts. Volunteers who go on their own may be turned away by local officials.

Any Hopkins employees -- physicians, nurses, or any other health care professionals -- who may have previously established, specific obligations with emergency response organizations to respond to the medical crisis in the Gulf Coast area are asked to let CEPAR know of their involvement immediately (send information to the "contact us" e-mail on the CEPAR website, http://www.hopkins-cepar.org/ or http://www.insidehopkinsmedicine.org/cepar/). It goes without saying that department directors and supervisors must be informed. It is important that whenever staff members volunteer to leave their positions temporarily to respond to a crisis elsewhere, other staff members are available to volunteer to assume the duties of their absent colleagues.

The Johns Hopkins Health System's legal department also notes that Hopkins' medical liability coverage only can be extended to personnel who volunteer as representatives of Hopkins Medicine, not as individuals.

CEPAR expects to learn more of HHS's and MHA's plans later today and will update you as soon as possible.

Gabor Kelen, M.D.
Director of CEPAR
Director, Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine