Boston Herald
BOSTON — Hub hospitals are already starting to plan for the next emergency based on lessons learned from the Boston Marathon bombings, including dealing with cellphone outages, challenges identifying patients and an “unprecedented” citywide lockdown the day of the manhunt for the suspects.
“That was definitely more logistically challenging than Patriots Day itself,” Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter Slavin told the Herald. “We had a hospital full of people who couldn’t leave. We had a staff that had spent the night that couldn’t leave, and the day staff that couldn’t get into the hospital. That was a scenario we had never anticipated — the one we faced on Patriots Day, we had practiced for repeatedly.”
Slavin, who just yesterday got a first look at an internal MGH report deconstructing the hospital’s response, said MGH hopes to improve on identifying unknown patients and staffing information areas to provide families with accurate updates.
Full story: Boston hospitals plan for worst with lessons from bombings