Hospitals and health care providers in West Virginia have made significant improvements in their emergency preparedness since 2013, but the state lags behind in areas of surveillance that could help prevent an emergency, according to a new study.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released its 2016 National Health Security Preparedness Index this week, and West Virginia and 15 other states scored below the national average. The index, which measures emergency readiness across six domains, looks at factors ranging from the number of epidemiologists in the state to the state's ability to monitor emergency medical services response time.
The state earned a score of 6.3 on a 10-point scale, below the national average of 6.7. West Virginia improved in four of the six domains measured, but has lost a lot of ground in health security surveillance, even has the rest of the country has improved - the state scored a 6 in the most recent index, compared to its score of 7.2 when the index started three years ago. The national score was 7.5, up from a score of 7 for the first year of the study.
"Surveillance, the domain that seems to have trailed off for West Virginia, is important when looking at the detection of health risks and emergencies," said Glen Mays, a professor at the University College of Public Health and a lead researcher for the index. "We evaluate lots of different organizations across different sectors and the roles they play - everything from whether schools are required to have disaster preparedness plans and test them regularly to look at what capabilities hospitals and nursing homes have... to look at state and local government agencies and what they bring to the table."
Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health officer and commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health, said there were a few factors measured in health security surveillance that were blows to the state's score - West Virginia does not have a state veterinarian, for example, and instead collaborates with the Department of Agriculture on the surveillance normally assigned to a state vet.
Gupta said the state is also still in the process of giving local health departments access to electronic health reporting, including health records, so that they are better able to transmit communicable disease data.
"Having said that, there are still the challenges of [lack of] high-speed Internet and things like that, but we're working through that," Gupta said.
The state's biggest improvement was in health care delivery, where it scored well above the national average, with a 6.4 to the U.S.'s overall score of 5.1. According to Gupta, the state's improvement in delivery is important, because it shows that greater coordination and improvement is possible.
"That's notable in that it was an area that was really stagnant across the country, and West Virginia saw an improvement in emergency preparedness activities among health-care providers and hospitals, and that's an area of progress we haven't seen in a lot of other states," Mays said. "That's something that should be very reassuring to the state."
Gupta said the state has made significant progress in threat preparedness and response following the 2014 Freedom Industries chemical leak into the Elk River, and has been proactive in developing responses for various health threats, including developing an Ebola response plan and, more recently, a Zika action plan, in spite of continued uncertainty surrounding the state budget and cuts to threat preparedness funding on the federal level.
"All of this progress is being made in light of the fact that we face federal funding cuts in emergency preparedness," he said. "I think that's a very important part of the equation, because even this year, we're going to see cuts to that funding."
To access the full index, visit www.nhspi.org.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.