Thread: Homeland Security WARNS NY City Hospitals

YES, Mayor Bloomberg, ILLEGALS bring more into the city than they take out!!!!!!

http://www.nysun.com/article/13256
Watch For Impostors, Homeland Security Warns City Hospitals

BY JULIA LEVY - Staff Reporter of the Sun
May 4, 2005


New York City hospitals are on the lookout for impostors trying to scope out health-care facilities and locate radioactive materials following warnings late last month from the Department of Homeland Security and the city Police Department about an emerging pattern of "suspicious incidents" in some American cities.

In an April 22 bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security warned hospitals that a string of people falsely representing themselves as inspectors for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations had visited hospitals across America at odd hours, demanding information about the inner workings of the facilities.

The incidents occurred in Los Angeles and Boston, where the impostors entered hospitals at 3 a.m., as well as in Detroit and at several hospitals in New Jersey, the bulletin said. After hospitals received the Homeland Security alert, another incident was reported, in Indianapolis.

"These said individuals were attempting to gain public health service information from hospital personnel, and behaved in a manner inconsistent with legitimate inspection professionals," the bulletin warned.

Although the department said it knows of no specific terrorist plot, the bulletin said: "These most recent nationwide impersonations are more noteworthy when seen in the broader context with similar incidents which have occurred from October 2004 to February 2005." The letter went on to detail a series of incidents in that period in which people were caught taking unauthorized pictures of hospitals, asking for hospital blueprints, requesting information about the whereabouts of medicines that would be used in biological attacks, and inquiring about the institutions' capacity for cardiac care, trauma care, helicopter access, and private rooms.

The New York Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul Browne, said the department's Operation Nexus sent a warning to city hospitals after foreign nationals, falsely claiming to be hospital inspectors, asked to survey hospitals' inventory. He said the incidents, though they did not represent a specific or credible threat, raised the concern that the fake inspectors were trying to gain access to radioactive materials, which are stored in hospitals and could be used to build a dirty bomb.

Operation Nexus, which promotes security at businesses and organizations, sent a letter to hospitals April 28, cautioning hospital security officials to look out for individuals attempting to conduct "surveys" at unusual times of day, asking irregular inquiries about surveillance, and prowling in the vicinity of storage rooms containing radioactive materials or radioactive medical waste. The letter also warned hospital officials to watch for suspicious individuals in the vicinity of vents or gas, water, and telecommunications feeds into the facility.

"Medical facilities such as hospitals have people, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and radiological materials, making such locations attractive targets," the letter, obtained by The New York Sun, said. It urged security officials to report any events so police can track patterns that emerge in the city.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joe Parris, said: "We're aware of the situation, but we're not drawing any conclusions as to what this might be about."

Officials in New York City said there have been no reports of suspicious characters trying to get information about hospitals here, but that is no reason to relax security, they said.

"This is a potential playground for terrorists looking for a means of executing plans that could have really disastrous consequences," the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, Irwin Redlener, said.

Dr. Redlener said hospitals are potential terrorist targets for three main reasons.

First, there would be "high drama" associated with an attack on a hospital.

"The targeting of a medical facility would have the effect of really horrifying individuals and citizens and the general public and having a very demoralizing effect on people," he said.

Second, an attack on a hospital could interfere with the first-responders system, possibly destabilizing a relief effort.

Finally, equipment and materials in hospitals could be removed from the buildings and used by terrorists. Terrorists could, for example, use radiological material to create dirty bombs, or steal, an ambulance to create a well-disguised explosive.

"I think these are legitimately serious concerns. I don't think this is hype," he said. "I don't think there's any other purpose here than making sure we are doing as much as we can to prevent a calamity. I think it's appropriate to take very seriously both the targeted medical facility and the use of a medical facility to facilitate other terrorist attacks."

The senior vice president and general counsel to the Greater New York Hospital Association, Susan Waltman, said that since September 11, the city's hospitals have beefed up technological surveillance, limited points of entry, and improved training for workers.

She said the hospitals are "very conscious" of the possibility that certain unauthorized people are interested in nuclear medicine containing radiological materials, and keep those medicines in closely guarded, restricted areas.

"Our hospitals have been very vigilant from September 11 on. We all have security in place," she said, adding that every government alert prompts hospitals to re-evaluate security procedures.

She said that although it is important to be alert, it is also important that apparently none of the people trying to gain unauthorized access to hospitals actually tricked hospital workers into letting them in.

"I don't know of anybody that's been fooled," she said.

The president of the Metropolitan Healthcare Security Directors Association, Frank Taormina, said he takes the warnings very seriously.

"It's something I am concerned about. It makes you wonder what the underlying reasons are for all this," Mr. Taormina said. "This is on every security director's radar."

Mr. Taormina, who also is chairman of the New York City chapter of the International Association of Healthcare, Security, and Safety, said New York's hospitals have been careful to check identifications, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

"We've been assuming the worst in New York ever since September 11.We've been checking IDs all along," he said. "Anybody who comes in the hospital and says, 'I'd like to take a look at your operating room,' you have to step back and make sure they're who they say they are before you show them anything."

The assistant director for security at NYU Downtown Hospital, Simba Khalfani, said the hospital has had a few scares recently, including an incident when a Frenchman expressed interest in the inner workings of the hospital. The hospital did not report the incident, Mr. Khalfani said, because it did not seem to meet the description of occurrences provided by the government.

"We're very well drilled on it around here, what to look for, as opposed to stigmatizing everyone who walks through the door," he said. He said questions about hospital capacity and the location of the radiology room set off alarms.

The chief medical officer and senior vice president of NYU Downtown,Warren Licht, said that, partly because of his hospital's location just three blocks from the World Trade Center site, the staff is "acutely aware" of terrorist threats, and everyone - not just security guards - receives security training. Nurses, for example, learn through the routine training to question someone not wearing an identification badge.

He said the "incident command-center training" reminds hospital workers to be particularly alert at the most sensitive areas, including the lab, the pharmacy, the loading dock, and the ambulance bay.

"They're vulnerable because they are, for lack of a better word, open orifices into the hospital," he said.

The chief corporate service officer at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, Mark Ackermann, said hospitals have been on alert as terrorist targets.

"One of the things major trauma centers talk about is being a terrorist target itself," he said. "We keep very close tabs on our uniforms and our equipment."

He said there were nine points of egress at St. Vincent's before the September 11 attacks. Now, there are only two - the emergency room and the front door. He said the hospital also has drills on internal and external disaster.

"For us, the wake-up call was the World Trade Center bombing in 1993," he said. "Human nature is you become ever more vigilant whenever anything happens."

A spokesman for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, Mark Forstneger, said there are usually two or three reports a year of impersonations of hospital surveyors. He said typically, people posing as JCAHO surveyors demand preferential treatment in the emergency room or ask for medical records of a family member.

There have been more reports recently, he said, and the fake JCAHO officials have asked for access to hospital facilities rather than for special treatment.

Mr. Forstneger said that hospitals know about most commission surveys in advance, and that when a survey is unannounced, the surveyors always come with identification cards and letters explaining the purpose of the visit. He said hospital officials should confirm the surveyors' identity before allowing them access.

"We really don't know why these incidents are happening," he said. "There are a lot of things in a hospital that are desirable. Medications. Drugs. Equipment. In a post-9/11 world, one's mind can wander and assume the worst."

"We really don't know why these incidents are happening," he said. "There are a lot of things in a hospital that are desirable. Medications. Drugs. Equipment. In a post-9/11 world, one's mind can wander and assume the worst."

Shouldnt we assume the worst and prepare for it?