Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, a county-funded, safety net institution in economically disadvantaged northeast Houston, is the sole hospital to provide inpatient, obstetric, and emergency care for nearly 25% of the city’s land area. Although it remained open for operations during Hurricane Harvey in late August 2017, the storm caused significant moisture damage to its infrastructure, necessitating the closure of more than half of its 200 inpatient beds for several months after the storm.
How Hurricane Harvey Spurred a Houston Hospital to Rethink Emergency Care
Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, a county-funded, safety-net institution in economically disadvantaged northeast Houston, is the sole hospital to provide inpatient, obstetric, and emergency care for nearly 25% of the city’s land area. Although it remained open for operations during Hurricane Harvey in late August, the storm caused significant moisture damage to its infrastructure, necessitating the closure of more than half of its 200 inpatient beds for several months after the storm. The hospital’s emergency department (ED) continued to provide effective emergency care to the community —many of whose members had substantially increased need for medical care after the hurricane. To do that, the ED, which already operated with the resource constraints of crowding (more patients than treatment spaces) and boarding (insufficient inpatient beds, which require patients to stay in the ED until beds are available), had to undergo sweeping changes almost overnight. Six months later, largely as a result of this revamping, the ED is now more efficient and safer than ever before — despite a sustained 7.5% surge in volume after Hurricane Harvey struck.