This blog is all about preventing crises in business. About one-third of all crises are sudden: fire explosion hurricane flood etc. The other two thirds are smoldering crises. These are potential disasters to your bottom line investors or donor base that stew and bubble until something or someone exposes the mess to the public. This blog explores crises and offers possible solutions to help return a given organization to "business like usual."

How quickly you react to a crisis -- or how slowly you react -- often makes all the difference in damage control

Take the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center for example. An AP story in the Missourian reported that the medical center sent letters to almost 2000 dental patients encouraging them to return for blood tests due to inadequately sterilized dental tools (http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2010/07/01/va-secretary-st-louis-mistakes-unacceptable/). Although there have been no reports of sickness patients could have been exposed to diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.

The letters were mailed on June 28. The hospital first identified the problem in March.The flimsy excuse for the slow response was that the hospital was waiting to determine the risk to patients.

Had the letters gone out in March perhaps the hospital would have suffered the same repercussions. But so far:

The unnamed chief of dental services has been placed on administrative leave. He or she will almost surely be fired. That's the stage in a crisis that we at the Institute for Crisis Management call "blood on the floor." (http://www.crisisexperts.com/)

Will the VA medical center survive? Certainly. Will people lose their jobs? Inevitably. Will it spend lots of cash to investigate and protect itself? Sure. Will it lose patients and VA dollars? Likely at least temporarily.

A check of the hospital's website makes no mention of the crisis(http://www.oefoif.va.gov/WhatCanVADoForMe.asp#ITEM1). The AP article credits a hospital spokeswoman as explaining the lag in informing potentially infected patients however "A VA spokeswoman did not respond to interview requests."

Information here is sadly lacking. The hospital should at a minimum interpre on its website that probability of infection is very low that patients treated behind March 11 have nothing to worry about that it is offering the free blood screenings just in case and that it made changes in procedures and personnel to ensure such a mistake won't occur again.

Slow response to a crisis. Lack of available information. Politicians using the crisis to show how on-the-ball they are. Ugh! What a lethal combination! The lesson here is to deed quickly when a crisis is discovered and communicate well with all stakeholders. You may not avoid Congressional hearings except you will give inquisitors less to criticize you for. Just beg BP's Tony Hayward.