The real issue here is planning, or apparent lack of in this case. A typical hospital is responsible for the lives of potentially hundreds of people in any given day. This is serious business. And, it's big business. There should be no shortcuts here. Hospitals have money and resources and they must allocate some of each to handle unforseen emergencies, be it loss of power, telephones, etc. They invest not only money, but time to plan for these things.
When someone says that their hospital is relying on two ham radios for emergency communications, I suspect that individual is not really in on the game plan and someone is just trying to make him feel needed, because no responsible hospital administration would rely on two ham radios for emergency communications for potentially hundreds of staff. "Sure bring your two Ham radios, stand over there in that corner, and if we need you we know where you are..." The alternative is to believe that this hospital has no emergency plan, which in this post 9/11, post Katrina, post Houston era, is impossible for me to believe.
Someone mentioned Marine VHF radios, well those wouldn't be legal for hospital use, but there are many options for communications available to hospitals that are legal. Anyone that has ever been to the roof of a typical hospital can tell you it's full of commercial radio gear, much of it is rental space, but a lot of it is not. A typical hospital will have its own paging system, a security repeater and an admin/maint repeater. This equipment operates on frequencies licensed to them and they can add as many portables as they want. So if there's a shortage of equipment it's because they made a conscious decision not to purchase it. They could also rent radios on a commercial trunk system, etc.
The FCC knows this and that's part of the reason the rules are what they are. You don't want them to rely on volunteers that may not be available when the real answer is spend the money and get the commercial gear you need and are required to have. Remember that COOP plan you submitted where you said you had a communications plan and the grant money we gave you...