The group charged with planning area hospitals’ responses to a terrorist attack is still waiting for a $150,000 fiscal 2007 grant from the D.C. government for coordination efforts.
The D.C. Hospital Association has yet to receive the award, which was included in the District’s budget, though the fiscal year started Oct. 1. The money is slated for emergency preparedness coordination efforts among hospitals regionwide, including training exercises and collaboration with local and federal government agencies.
Robert Malson, DCHA executive director, said there’s little reason to believe the government will renege, but his group has grown increasingly frustrated over the years with a bureaucracy it contends is a growing obstacle to good planning.
The $150,000 grant is going through the procurement process and should be disbursed soon, said DOH spokeswoman Leila Abrar.
Local hospitals have spent $14 million since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in preparation for another incident, said Dr. Jeffrey Elting, the association’s medical director for bioterrorism response coordination. But the dollars are drying up. DCHA sought $4.7 million in federal funds in 2006 via grant applications written by the D.C. government; it received $700,000. And the ability to make a discernible improvement has dwindled, Elting said.
The relationship between the association and the District’s Emergency Health and Medical Services Administration “has become less cooperative,” a DCHA official told the council in October. The grant process “has not worked as well as it could or should have,” and “our best efforts are often met with bureaucratic roadblocks when we try to provide advice on how to improve hospitals’ preparedness.”
Abrar said the health department considers DCHA “central to our emergency preparedness efforts.”
