RUMFORD — With assistance from grants from the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation and the Davis Family Foundation, the Swift River Family Medicine facility adjacent to Rumford Hospital will be able to fully participate as an extension of the hospital in a disaster or epidemic. Throughout several years of training and drills, the facility has been used to triage and treat victims whose injuries are less severe than those treated at the hospital.

“Rumford Hospital has taken seriously its role in being prepared for any disaster or emergency that could affect our entire community, and part of the planning for such an event we count on using the Swift River Family Medicine facility for seeing patients as needed,” said John Kroger, MD, FAAFP, medical director, Rumford Hospital Physician Group.

“This was utilized a couple of years ago when we dealt with a gas exposure to students and faculty from Region 9 and Swift River turned half of its building into an assessment and treatment area for about 10 of the patients,” he said.

Although all critical areas of Rumford Hospital have access to generator power should commercial power fail, until now an outage would have limited the Swift River facility’s ability to serve as a hospital during an emergency accompanied by a power failure.

“To be able to meet the needs of dealing with any disaster or emergency it is important to have guaranteed power to the facility. The grants we received have enabled the hospital and practice to meet this need with the installation of the generator,” said Kroger.

In addition to serving in times of emergency and disaster, the generator would allow Swift River Family Medicine to continue to operate and serve patients at the time of any power outage. “Particularly at a time when so many in the community have financial and economic concerns, to be able to provide this equipment at no cost to our health care system is truly a blessing.”