Physicians meet blackout challenges great and small

Last month's massive outage left office-based doctors working in the dark and hospital physicians guessing just how much their backup systems could handle.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Sept. 8, 2003.

The Aug. 14 power outage affecting eight states and one Canadian province disrupted the lives of more than 50 million people -- and physicians were no exception.

When the lights went out for G. Brian Bechill, DO, a family physician at Bedford Family Physicians in Lambertville, Ohio, he examined patients already in the office using various penlights, flashlights and whatever light was coming through the windows. Office staff tried to contact other patients who had yet to come in to tell them the office would be closing because of a lack of power, a task made difficult by the fact that the phones were out. Patients were anxious because of fears that this was another incident like the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

When Dr. Bechill was finally able to leave, he took with him $3,000 worth of vaccines and other perishables because the power was still on at his home in Toledo.

"It was a little frustrating, but it was fun to go around with flashlights. It seemed to make things almost more cozy with patients," said Dr. Bechill. But he said his wife was a bit upset when he showed up with "this bag of stuff" when the refrigerator was already full of food.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away in New York City, Elliott Friedman, MD, director of pediatric emergency services at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, was also struggling to work in the midst of the largest blackout in U.S. history. One of the biggest challenges was guessing how much the hospital's backup generators could handle.