WILLMAR -- A handful of volunteers from Rice Memorial Hospital stands ready to help provide medical care to the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast region -- but they're still waiting to get the goahead from disaster relief officials.
"We're certainly trying to help out where we can and offer resources where it makes sense," Rice CEO Lorry Massa said this week. "It's been difficult to get straightforward information about what's needed... It just doesn't appear there's a plan, frankly."
Minnesota hospitals and the Minnesota Department of Health were asked by federal officials last week to round up 100 volunteers to help staff an emergency field hospital in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
By last Friday, about 125 health care workers had come forward. Among the potential volunteers are a nurse and an emergency services physician at Rice Hospital, Massa said.
Plans are being discussed as well for the Willmar Ambulance Service to send a vehicle and a couple of emergency medical technicians to support firefighter units in the hurricane-stricken region, he said.
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Social workers, housekeepers, nursing assistants and psychiatrists also are needed.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said it wants to gather about 4,000 health care volunteers from across the U.S. They'll be organized into 40 teams of 100 people who will staff field hospitals which each care for about 250 patients. The volunteer teams are expected to rotate in and out of the Gulf Coast region over the next 10 to 14 weeks. The effort is part of an emergency planning system that has been put into place in Minnesota. The Minnesota Hospital Association is coordinating with the Minnesota Department of Health, which has databases of potential volunteers through the Medical Reserve Corps and Minnesota Responds, the American Hospital Association and individual Minnesota hospitals. Under a separate compact, another team of health care providers and hospital staff is supposed to be deployed to the Gulf area as part of the state's existing MN-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team.
As recently as Wednesday, details were still unclear about how Minnesota's smaller community hospitals can help, Massa said. "It's been hard to really figure out what's needed."
Rice Hospital employees have been raising money for disaster relief, and the option of allowing people to cash in some of their paid time off is being explored, Massa said. "We think it would be an effective mechanism to generate some significant dollars."
