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Powered for Patients, a 501c3 non-profit that works to safeguard emergency power in critical healthcare facilities and boost power outage support for in-home life support users, announced today the appointment of two new members to its Board of Directors.

John Wilgis, MBA, RRT, the Vice President for Member and Business Relations for the Florida Hospital Association and Mary Casey Lockyer, MHS, BSN, RN, CCRN, the former Disaster Health Services Program Lead at the national headquarters of the American Red Cross, have both been appointed to the Board.

“I’m very excited to welcome John and Mary to our Board of Directors,” said Eric Cote, founder and project director for Powered for Patients (P4P). “They are both respected national leaders in disaster preparedness and response and their unique skillsets will help advance our important work on many fronts.”

“Given the number of deadly hurricanes Florida has experienced over the years, I’ve seen how much a disaster-impacted community depends on its hospitals to remain operational during power outages,” said Wilgis. “That’s why the work of Powered for Patients in developing and promoting best practices that safeguard emergency power is so critical and something I’m excited to support.”

During her tenure at the American Red Cross, Casey-Lockyer saw first-hand the serious challenges facing individuals who rely on electric-powered medical devices and sought refuge in disaster shelters. Many shelters were ill-equipped to provide the services and supports medical device users required.

“The work Powered for Patients is doing to boost power outage support for life support users living at home is truly groundbreaking,” said Casey-Lockyer. “I look forward to working with Eric and our other board members to support this work and help it realize its full potential.”

Power Outage Partners, a P4P initiative, seeks to provide life-saving power to individuals who rely on life support equipment at home, extending device run time so patients have more time to safely evacuate during power outages. In short duration outages, the need to evacuate may be averted. The latest Power Outage Partners initiative is being advanced in Texas, a state where recent natural disasters, including Winter Storm Uri in 2021 and Hurricane Beryl in 2024, created deadly challenges for individuals depending on electric powered medical devices.

The first Power Outage Partners initiative was launched as a pilot in Louisiana, a state that has also seen more than its share of natural disasters. Initial planning for the project was made possible with CDC funding and project management support from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO).

ASTHO published a Toolkit in 2023 that chronicles the Louisiana project and details other strategies jurisdictions can use to boost power outage support for individuals relying on electric-powered medical devices in their homes. 

In welcoming its newest board members, Cote also thanked outgoing P4P board chair April Salas for her contributions over the years. “April’s senior-level experience at the Department of Energy supporting power outage planning with our nation’s governors and local officials gave her the perfect perspective to help support the mission of Powered for Patients as our Board Chair,” said Cote.

Mehdi Moutihar, a former professor of entrepreneurship at Johnson & Wales University, who currently serves as an organizational development consultant and executive coach, continues to serve on the P4P board.

In January of this month, P4P project director Eric Cote traveled to Houston, TX to introduce the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities (GCPD) to the Power Outage Partners initiative, a groundbreaking program Cote helped the Louisiana Department of Health launch as a pilot in 2021.

The pilot sought to provide invasively ventilated Louisianans living at home with funding to purchase additional battery capacity for ventilators and other life support equipment, allowing more time for safe evacuations. In short duration outages, the need for evacuation could be eliminated. 

In 2023, Ron Lucey, the executive director of the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities (GCPD), heard Cote give a presentation on the Louisiana project and reached out to initiate discussions about a possible Texas project. Lucey’s interest was driven largely by Winter Storm Uri, which struck Texas in February 2021 and triggered prolonged and widespread power outages, resulting in the deaths of 248 Texans, including a Crosby, TX resident who depended on an oxygen concentrator.

The death of another oxygen-dependent Texan following Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 furthered Lucey’s interest in working with Cote. Since Cote’s presentation to the GCPD Board of Directors, he has been working with Lucey and other disability advocates in Texas to secure funding for an initiative.  Among the organizations Cote is working closely with is the TexMEP Association, a nonprofit that represents durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers in Texas. TexMEP has been working with Lucey since Winter Storm Uri to foster closer collaboration between DME suppliers and government agencies.

“We learned in Louisiana that DME suppliers have access to unique and highly valuable data about electricity-dependent individuals that government agencies had never sought to leverage,” said Cote. “We were able to bridge that gap thanks to help from several DME suppliers, who provided us with deidentified information about their customers, including  the number and type of devices being used, their frequency of use and their existing backup power resources. This information enabled us to determine how much additional battery capacity each customer would need to achieve 24 hours of runtime for their medical devices during a power outage. That was a real breakthrough that can help save lives in future disasters.”

Cote said the cooperation he received from DME suppliers in Louisiana has continued in Texas thanks to the TexMEP Association. “I’ve been working closely with Mark Gowen of Angell Medical Supply, one of the founders of the TexMEP Association, to develop an action plan in Texas that will leverage the untapped data DME suppliers have about their clients,” said Cote. “Success on this front will enable us to create a census of DME users in Texas, an unprecedented outcome that will greatly enhance the ability of local government agencies to prioritize power outage support for their most vulnerable electricity-dependent residents.”  

On July 8, 2024, Hurricane Beryl slammed into the Texas coast, plunging Houston and surrounding communities into a prolonged power outage. Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Category 5 hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, left a path of destruction in its wake as it moved through the Caribbean Sea and into the United States. Despite being downgraded to a category 1 hurricane when it came ashore in Texas, Beryl caused 64 deaths in the U.S., and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage.

Among the deaths was Judith Greet, a 71-year-old from Crystal Beach, TX who was unable to keep her oxygen concentrator running during the power outage. “The tragic death of Judith Greet is a sad reminder of the deadly threats power outages pose to the thousands of individuals who depend on life support equipment in their homes,” said P4P project director Eric Cote.

Power Outage Partners, a P4P initiative that seeks to boost power outage support for life support users, will help minimize the power outage risk for America’s most vulnerable citizens. Power Outage Partners project director Eric Cote has been in touch with Texas officials to explore opportunities to launch an initiative in the Lone Star state.

In 2021, Winter Storm Uri proved deadly when prolonged power outages led to deaths of more than 200 Texans. Among the 246 Texans who dies was Carroll Anderson, a 75-year-old resident of Crosby, TX who relied on an oxygen concentrator. Anderson was found dead near his pickup truck where relatives believe he was searching for an oxygen tank.

For the average person, power outages are inconvenient. For the growing number of people who depend on life support devices and other electric-powered medical equipment in their homes, even short-term outages can become a matter of life and death, especially when outages occur with little warning.

Absent a reliable source of backup power, many people who depend on life support and other types of durable medical equipment (DME) rely on hospital emergency departments or emergency shelters during an outage, simply seeking a place to plug in their device. For this reason, the CDC and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) provided funding and technical assistance to help launch Power Outage Partners, a groundbreaking Powered for Patients program piloted with the Louisiana Department of Health. 

The pilot sought to provide invasively ventilated Louisianans living at home with funding to enable them to purchase additional battery capacity for ventilators and other life support equipment, allowing more time for safe evacuations. In short duration outages, the need for evacuation may be eliminated. 

This groundbreaking program provides a roadmap that other jurisdictions can follow to boost their support for DME users during power outages. This roadmap is detailed in  Advanced Preparedness for Life Support Users During Power Outages, a Toolkit ASTHO published in August 2023. As the project director for the Louisiana pilot, ASTHO hired Eric Cote to author the Toolkit, which continues to serve as a resource for jurisdictions across the U.S. 

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Agency has introduced groundbreaking new protocols to safeguard emergency power in hospitals following a Powered for Patients-led initiative that identified a number of vulnerabilities and recommended new measures to better protect patients during power outages.

The new protocols were introduced in the recently published Healthcare Facility Emergency Power Resilience Playbook, which is the culmination of the comprehensive emergency power resilience initiative launched by the EMS Agency in May 2019. The initiative was driven in part by the increasing use of Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) by Southern California Edison to reduce the risk of wildfires sparked by utility lines. Powered for Patients (P4P) was hired as the contractor to support the initiative.  P4P founder and project director Eric Cote led the initiative and authored the recently published Playbook which has been distributed to all hospitals in LA County and sub-acute skilled nursing facilities.

During the initial phases of the initiative, Cote evaluated state and county emergency response plans to assess how they addressed threats to emergency power during a power outage. He also conducted a preliminary assessment of emergency power systems among a representative sample of LA County hospitals and created an inventory of temporary emergency power assets owned by LA County agencies and the cities of Long Beach and Los Angeles that could be deployed to hospitals during an emergency.

Cote concluded his initial work with a series of recommendations to address the vulnerabilities he uncovered, including the absence of any protocol addressing emergency power threat reporting and response. To address this gap, Cote recommended creation of an emergency power threat reporting protocol to provide county officials with an early warning at the first sign of a serious threat to emergency power during an outage. This improved situational awareness would accelerate government and private sector response to a stricken facility.

After touring emergency power systems at eight hospitals in LA County, Cote got his first glimpse of the vulnerabilities of some emergency power systems, leading to his recommendation that a census of every hospital’s emergency power system be conducted during a later phase of the project. Cote also proposed creation of a first-of-its-kind confidential risk rating of hospital emergency power systems to help county officials maintain higher vigilance of hospitals with risk factors such as outdated generators, limited onsite fuel storage or lack of redundant emergency power. Paying closer attention to the emergency power status of these higher risk facilities during an outage would give county officials a head start in addressing any threats to emergency power before they might trigger an emergency evacuation.

Cote’s census of emergency power systems in 80 LA county hospitals captured data on 271 generators and confirmed his concerns about an aging generator fleet. More than 30% of the generators captured in the census were over 30 years of age, considered the useful life of a generator based on a 2017 white paper published by Powered for Patients and the American Society of Healthcare Engineering. Among the county’s 14 single generator hospitals, the problem of outdated generators was twice as bad, with 64% of these facilities relying on generators in excess of 30 years of age, with some generators older than 40, 50 and even 60 years of age, a finding that raised serious concerns with EMS Agency leaders and public health officials in Sacramento.

“The discovery of so many outdated generators helped make the case for taking the unprecedented step of creating a confidential, risk rating of hospital emergency power systems,” said Cote.  EMS Agency officials adopted a two-tier risk system, with higher risk facilities designated as Tier 2 facilities.  EMS Agency officials staffing the agency’s 24/7, 365 Medical Alert Center, which will monitor emergency power status in LA County hospitals, will have restricted access to the list of Tier 2 hospitals so they know which ones to watch more closely during an outage.    

The recently published Playbook introduces the risk tiers and a robust emergency power status reporting protocol that requires hospitals to report emergency power status through ReddiNet within 30 minutes of a power outage. ReddiNet is the online platform developed by the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) that is used by the LA County EMS Agency, and 21 other California counties, for two-way communications between county EMS officials and hospitals. ReddiNet enables EMS agencies to poll hospitals on their status and allows hospitals to post information about limitations they may face in accepting new patients or providing advanced life-saving services. ReddiNet developed a new emergency power status reporting dashboard to accommodate the new LA County EMS Agency protocol.

Over the past two months, training sessions and table-top exercises have been conducted for hospitals in Los Angeles County to introduce the Playbook and its new protocols.

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices invited Powered for Patients project director Eric Cote to serve as a panelist for a discussion on the intersections of supporting emergency preparedness for healthcare facilities and bolstering the healthcare workforce at an August 2023 Healthcare Workforce Summit held in Bloomfield, CO.

Cote addressed the connection between workforce challenges in the hospital sector and emergency power resilience, noting that retirements among hospital facility directors are outpacing the ability of hospitals to fill vacancies. Cote said the shortage of facility directors, and other members of hospital engineering departments, can have a direct impact on emergency power readiness. Among the solutions Cote offered to address staff shortages was leveraging available technology to remotely monitor emergency power systems and provide automated, real time notifications when emergency power systems are activated or experience a problem while operating.