SESSION DESCRIPTION

Pediatric patients have always posed unique challenges to healthcare systems. Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital (PCH) is a standalone children's hospital that sits in a primary catchment of 40,000 square miles, and includes urban, rural and frontier areas in over 9 states. PCH lost over a quarter of its available beds in an instant, due to a massive flood event that also occurred during an unprecedented COVID and RSV surge. This is their response and recovery story. 
 
Scenario: Introduce one unknown construction error. Add one late evening, monsoon storm that stalls over the hospital in its climb up the mountain. And you may have the ingredients for a calamity. 
 
The presenters will describe: 
 
How a missing expansion joint system created a funnel effect for the rainfall, into the building, in moments losing approximately 40% of the hospital's beds, majority of those - ICU beds; requiring protective shut down of imaging equipment, loss of access to your rooftop helipads; and water moving through all floors of the facility.  
 
The immediate impact on the facility, the initial rapid response of the nursing supervisor and facility staff, the pursuant command operations and extensive and extended recovery efforts in response to this scenario which presented itself over Primary Children's Hospital on August 1st of 2021. 

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About the Presenters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Arthur

Kevin has 35 years of experience in healthcare as a hospital-based Paramedic and Emergency Management Program Manager. Mr. Arthur worked for 19 years in the Emergency Department at a 685 bed Level I Trauma Center. At the moment of 9/11 Mr. Arthur’s career began to be modified to develop an Emergency Management Department and Program for the flagship hospital of WellSpan Health in South-Central Pennsylvania.

 

For the past 10 years he has worked as the Emergency Management Program Manager at Primary Children’s Hospital (PCH), a 289-bed hospital and level I pediatric trauma center. As the Emergency Manager, he is responsible for public health and disaster emergency preparedness and response for the hospital, its affiliated clinics and for the PCH Children’s Health Complex. Kevin is responsible for all emergency management program design and development which includes: plan and procedure development, establishing and maintaining response assets, staff training for response to disaster situations and command cadre education and support.

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Rebekah Reynosa

Rebekah grew up in central Pennsylvania and attended The Pennsylvania State University, majoring in both Biology and Earth Science. After graduating from Penn State, Bekah received her Master of Science in Disaster Medicine and Management from Philadelphia University (now Jefferson University).While working on her master’s degree, Bekah taught high school math and science at a small, private school, and interned at Dauphin County Emergency Management Agency in Harrisburg, PA. Additionally, she has been a certified EMT-B for over 6 years.

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After obtaining her master’s degree, Bekah worked for a private consulting firm in Pennsylvania, where she was involved in the development and implementation of large county and state public health preparedness projects and healthcare coalition building in PA, DE, WV, MD, and NJ. Moreover, she has experience with county and state-level plan development and multiagency exercise coordination. In 2017, Bekah moved to Utah to become the Emergency Management Coordinator at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. Bekah is a Certified Healthcare Emergency Coordinator (CHEC-II), and has spoken at numerous conferences across the country regarding pediatric emergency preparedness and reunification.

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