The Emergency Management Plan
For more than 30 years, The Joint Commission has required accredited healthcare organizations to maintain a disaster plan. The Joint Commission’s Emergency Management Standards require that the organization identifies the potential emergencies that could affect them, and develop a plan which describes how the facility will mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover from all hazards, both natural and man-made. The plan must also address command structures, backup communications systems, building evacuations, and coordination with other community health care organizations and emergency responders.
How To Prepare
“When a community is afflicted with a disaster, citizens don’t run to the police or fire station, they run to the hospital,” says Joe Cappiello, past vice president of Accreditation Field Operations for The Joint Commission. “The hospital becomes the beacon and a source of fortitude to the community...disaster preparedness should rise fairly high on the board’s priority list of hospital responsibilities, right up there with quality of care and safety to the public.”
You cannot simply write a disaster plan and expect everything to work out; you must be proactive and make sure you are doing what you can to prepare for a disaster. Below are a few tips to help you successfully implement your plan.
• Identify who should be trained and the training needs for each staff member.
• Make sure every employee knows their role.
• Ensure competency-based training programs.
• Identify cross-training opportunities.
• Access other training programs offered through the federal government or Joint Commission Resources.
• Ensure incident command training for appropriate personnel.
• Recognize drills or exercises as a critical element of the emergency preparedness process.
• Involve all players in exercises and drills.
• Practice with other communities.
• Identify performance measures for drills and exercises.
• Ensure the realism of drills and exercises.
• Include alternative care sites and shelters in disaster drills.
The Joint Commission specifically requires that accredited healthcare providers:
• Develop a written Emergency Operations Plan (EOP)
• Conducting a hazard vulnerability analysis
• Work with community partners
• Ensure a communication plan is in place
• Conduct at least two emergency response exercises per year (at least one to include an escalating event where the local community is unable to support the event and at least one to include participation in a community-wide exercise)
How HRTMS is Helping
Knowing how important Joint Commission compliance is to numerous healthcare organizations, HRTMS has added a new feature to its already comprehensive performance management solution, HRTMS Performance. The Joint Commission requires at least two emergency response exercises or drills per year but the more you can do to prepare your staff for an emergency, the more likely you will be able to continue to safely serve your community and meet Joint Commission disaster planning requirements.
That’s why HRTMS has just release the Annual Validation Test that allows HR to test employees on organization safety and of their knowledge of the hospital’s emergency plan. HR administrators can create a customized test based on their individual plan and make it available on each employee’s page. They can also choose which group of employees will receive each question and receive updates on who filled out the test, when and what score each employee received.
This is just one way to test employees on emergency plans. What does your organization do to prepare employees in case of an emergency?
