What to Know About Your Appointments During Hurricane Season
What to Expect With a Hurricane
At the start of hurricane season, which runs June 1 through Nov. 30, Moffitt Cancer Center urges you to have a storm plan in place. We also want you to know what to expect when it comes to managing your appointments before, during and after a storm. Here's what happens behind the scenes when we work to reschedule you.
5 Days Before Landfall
Moffitt carefully monitors for tropical weather during hurricane season. Typically, within five days of a storm making landfall in the Tampa Bay area, Moffitt alerts our team members and our patients with upcoming appointments as emergency planning begins. We regularly update Moffitt.org/hurricane with the latest information and share notifications in the patient portal and on social media.
Please note, once we receive a tropical advisory, patients will not be able to reschedule appointments through the patient portal. Moffitt disables this function during a storm so we can best serve patients by reducing duplicate requests to reschedule appointments.
2 Day Before Landfall
Once there is greater certainty of the storm's impact in the Tampa Bay area, Moffitt will continue to provide updates to patients and team members on Moffitt.org/hurricane, the patient portal, social media and the patient hotline at 813-745-3500. Depending on the storm and its path, a final decision on campus closures may be pending.
1 Day Before Landfall
Moffitt will decide on closures to campuses and communicate this decision to patients and team members. If we need to cancel your appointment or surgery, we will alert you through phone call, text, email or voicemail.
What Do We Mean by a Moffitt Closure?
- Our team staffs 24/7 through a storm at Moffitt Magnolia Campus and Moffitt McKinley Hospital where we have patients admitted for care in an inpatient capacity.
- As we carefully evaluate the storm's projected path, we may close some locations
and leave others open. - We may also limit services available at a particular location. We will assess any services we can continue and contact those specific patients that can remain on the schedule.
- If patients do not receive direct communication to remain on the schedule, and did not receive any Moffitt communication alerts, they should consider their appointment to be cancelled.
After the Storm
Once the storm passes and our operations can safely resume, Moffitt will contact all patients to reschedule appointments. Your care team will take careful steps to evaluate and determine a plan for you. We will contact you once your appointment is rescheduled. You will receive an email notification to check the patient portal. You do not need to call us to cancel or reschedule; we will automatically do this for you.
Storm Updates
Moffitt will continually update Moffitt.org/hurricane with the latest information. You can also check:
- Patient portal
- Patient hotline at 813-745-3500
- Moffitt's social media channels X, Facebook and Instagram
Hurricane