Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T09:32:22.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Mortality in Nursing Home Evacuations in the United States from 1995-2017

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2019

Sharon Mace
Affiliation:
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, United States
Daniel Caicedo
Affiliation:
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Warrensville Heights, United States
Aishwarya Sharma
Affiliation:
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Warrensville Heights, United States
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
Introduction:

There are an estimated 15,600 nursing homes with a total of 1.4 million residents in the United States. The number of residents will continue to increase due to the aging population, and the associated morbidities will make it difficult to evacuate them safely.

Aim:

This study is the first of its kind to provide an analysis of the number of nursing home deaths caused by external and internal events following evacuations.

Methods:

Information from the databases Lexis Nexis and PubMed were compiled and limited to news articles from 1995-2017. The gathered information included the reason for evacuation, injuries, deaths, and locations within the United States.

Results:

From 1995 to 2017, there was a total of 51 evacuations and 141 deaths in nursing homes. 27 (53%) evacuations were due to external events which resulted in a combined 121 (86%) deaths, and 24 (47%) evacuations were due to internal events which resulted in a combined 20 (14%) deaths. Hurricanes were responsible for the majority of deaths during evacuations, followed by fires and floods. The number of evacuations and deaths increased the greatest between 2005 to 2008.

Discussion:

External events have the greatest impact on loss of life. Internal disasters are about equal in the number of incidents, however, external events have a much greater mortality rate. Exact numbers on injuries, morbidity, and mortality are difficult to ascertain, but it appears to be related to natural disasters. In view of the increasing likelihood of natural disasters related to global warming, a drastic improvement of standard evacuation procedures of long-term nursing homes is critical to decreasing mortality of nursing home residents. There also needs to be a nationally standardized method of reporting evacuations in order to better analyze data on nursing homes.

Type
Aged Care and Disability
Copyright
© World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2019