Posted on 02/24/2009

Be Careful Where You Stay, Says SCA Foundation

“If your heart stops suddenly, you may not want to be at a hotel,” reports Scott Mc Cartney in today’s Wall Street Journal.

According to the WSJ report, about 20 percent of Hyatt Hotels have automated external defibrillators (AEDs). Choice Hotels International, Inc. says “very few” have AEDs. Other major chains--Marriott International, Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp., Best Western International, Inc., and Starwood Hotels & Resorts declined to tell the WSJ how many of their hotels have AEDs. InterContinental Hotels Group PLC doesn’t require its hotels to have AEDs, but the matter is under review.

“At a five-star hotel, are they really giving the best service they can to their guests if they don't have an AED?” asked Maureen O'Connor public-access defibrillation program manager in San Diego, where a county program to push AED installation has run into resistance from hotels, says the WSJ report.

Concerns cited by hotels include device costs ($1,200-2,000 each), liability issues (failure to place enough devices, place them in the right locations, replace batteries in time) and training of hotel workers who have high turnover rates.

AED advocates and hotel-industry officials agree that rarely, if ever, have hotels been found liable for a death when an AED was present (though some cases may have been settled). Hotels don't face any greater liability risk than other public buildings that have AEDs.

"You could imagine in the neighborhood of 10,000 people could be saved who today are dying" if AEDs were more widely available, says Michael Sayre, MD, emergency medicine physician at Ohio State University Medical Center, vice chairman of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, and chairman of the Founding Board of Directors of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation.

In Pittsburgh, a program funded by the St. Margaret Foundation has installed and maintained 1,280 AEDs in local public buildings, saving 66 lives so far. Some hotels have "been reluctant and want nothing to do with it," says Dave Bianco, the program's coordinator.

But, as the WSJ reports, “The Omni William Penn Hotel was glad to have an AED when a worker collapsed in sudden cardiac arrest at a 2007 wedding reception in a 17th-floor banquet hall. While hotel officials radioed to the lobby to have the AED sent upstairs, the groom and the best man -- both cardiologists -- started CPR. The AED shocked the man four times and restarted his heart, and he was back at work in two weeks.

"Be careful where you stay," says Mary Newman, SCA Foundation president. "We are seriously concerned that hotels do not understand their responsibilities regarding the safety of their guests. Hotels should have basic safety measures in place. This means having AEDs in multiple locations on site and personnel trained and available to use them. Concerns about costs, liability, and training are vacuous. Would hotels debate the value of fire extinguishers? AEDs at least as important and should be given the highest priority. The chances of suffering SCA are much greater than the chances of being caught in a hotel fire."

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