Against the backdrop of a potentially devastating hurricane season, the still uncontrolled BP oil spill and the heightened possibility of a domestic terrorist attack, the House subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations evaluated the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ role in emergency preparedness in a hearing Wednesday.

The hearing titled Emergency Preparedness: Evaluating the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Fourth Mission assessed the VA’s emergency preparedness posture, also known as the Fourth Mission, especially its role in preparing for and responding to large scale natural and man-made disasters as a backup to the Department of Defense health care system.

“While FEMA and the Department of Health and Human Services tend to take the lead role whenever an emergency occurs, one cannot deny the large importance of emergency preparedness at the VA,” Committee member Rep. David Roe (R-Tenn), declared, noting the vast network of the VA healthcare system, which currently encompasses 153 hospitals and 788 community outpatient clinics.

As part of the Federal Response Plan, the VA plays a support role to several primary agencies including the American Red Cross, Department of Defense (DoD), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Three groups of panelists, including representatives from several of the VA’s partners in emergency response, testified before the committee on the state of the VA’s resources and emergency preparedness and response plans as well as those of their own agencies.

Among those present were representatives from the American Red Cross, DoD, HHS and the VA.

Addressing shortcomings and mistakes made during past disasters such as Katrina, Subcommittee Chairman Harry Mitchell, (D-Ariz) and Representative Roe (R-Tenn) asked the panelists how emergency preparedness plans and conditions have changed.

Specifically, Roe (R-Tenn) pointed to incidents surrounding Katrina, where patients were moved to different facilities, without their next-of-kin being notified and the hysteria that resulted from such incidents.

Deputy Secretary of Emergency Management, Kevin Hanretta, said that the HHS has improved patient tracking since Katrina. He used the recent Haiti Earthquake, after which VA staff worked with HHS in Tampa, Fla. and Atlanta, Ga to route Haitian evacuees to treatment facilities, as an example.

Another point of interest for the committee was the training of healthcare workers and volunteers for large scale crisis and emergency response.

Neal Denton, of the American Red Cross, stated that the Red Cross continues to train disaster workers. A written statement from Denton showed that the number of disaster-trained volunteers increased from 23,000 before Katrina to more than 90,000 after Katrina.

José Riojas, Assistant Secretary of Operations, Security and Preparedness at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, said that several planned training exercises for VA workers have already taken place since the start of this year.

In his statement, Riojas assessed the VHA’s emergency preparedness response since Katrina and affirmed the need for continuing “comprehensive assessment of all VA medical centers,” and providing “an internal VHA patient evacuation system that does not rely on outside resources.”

Darrell Henry, Executive Director Healthcare Coalition for Emergency Preparedness in Washington, DC, summarized the VA’s critical role as a safety net in the event of catastrophic emergencies requiring surge capacity for the health response system.

“One of the VA’s missions is to serve as a safety net when DoD, public health facilities, and private hospitals fail or are overburdened,” Henry said. “The impacts to private hospitals and critical supplies due to such events would likely spillover to the VA, especially if we are talking about a serious medical surge event or transportation constraint. In such an event, it is easy to assume that VA facilities would experience similar disruptions in medical waste removal and other services whether or not it is providing mutual aid.”

Jade Brown is a 4th year journalism student at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla., and is currently a summer intern for Homeland Security Today."