St. Alexius Medical Center takes Fargo patients escaping flood
Posted on 3/27/2009
In the wee hours of the morning, St. Alexius Medical Center admitted five patients evacuated from Fargo. Patients admitted included four critical care patients and one 2-month-old pediatric patient.
MeritCare in consultation with Fargo emergency management authorities began mandatory evacuation of patients at about 8:30 p.m. last night. Originally, St. Alexius was notified to expect more patients from MeritCare and Fargo long-term care facilities, but hazardous road conditions made it unsafe for patients to be transported west. The first patient arrived by helicopter at 3:26 a.m. and others followed later in the day.
St. Alexius activated a limited Incident Command Center earlier in the week, when the North Dakota Department of Health notified facilities statewide that patient evacuation might be necessary due to the rapidly rising Red River in Fargo, when evacuations began occurring in Bismarck and when we were notified that MeritCare was not accepting any new patients.
Besides the patients arriving early this morning as a result of the evacuation, St. Alexius has received a number of patients from outside our usual referral area when MeritCare stopped taking patients. The medical center activates the Incident Command process in order to bring together its emergency preparedness team to begin to assess resources in response to an emergency event. Assessment of resources is ongoing and the team is updated regularly to ensure accurate information of resources is constantly available.
St. Alexius will continue to keep its emergency preparedness team in this limited status as long as the current natural disaster environment exists in Bismarck/Mandan and around the state and a response by St. Alexius may be necessary.