California doctors jolted by power crisis

The state's rotating blackouts have left some physicians scrambling to reschedule everything from annual checkups to elective surgeries.

By Kathleen F. Phalen, AMNews correspondent. Feb. 26, 2001.

Californians have been on stage 3 power alerts for nearly a month as the state's debt-ridden utilities scrounge for power, hour by hour. If there's not enough, things go black.

Although there is a grid system designed to warn areas of pending blackouts, it's not working so well.

Imagine being a surgeon and losing power in the middle of surgery, or being ventilator dependent and getting cut off while at home alone. More than likely, backup batteries or generators will keep things going for a few hours. But then what?

"We're in a crisis stage," said Brian Roach, MD, an internist and president and CEO of Mills-Peninsula Medical Group in Burlingame, Calif., near San Francisco.

The way Dr. Roach explained it, there's a domino effect. When backup power gets used, there's no backup for the backup. Elective surgical procedures get cancelled. Patients get bumped back.

"By law, it's required that there be backup for at least three hours, and my system is instantaneous," said James Pertsch, MD, a plastic surgeon in San Mateo. Dr. Pertsch's surgery center has already experienced at least one blackout. "But you hesitate to start any elective surgery until the power comes back. So at the minimum our holdup is two hours. And it is quite expensive to run an OR with nurses sitting around and then getting overtime."

Backup batteries for home medical equipment drain, and charging is impossible until power is restored. Doctors' offices go dark, and appointments must be cancelled. Emergency 911 systems get overburdened with nonemergency calls. [...]