Emergency Preparedness

Accredited providers are required to have plans for emergencies and disasters, and the fall is a great time of year to review them in preparation for any potential winter crises.

Emergencies are generally described as events that happen suddenly during business hours, such as a fire, the loss of power or utilities for an extended period of time or a flood from a burst pipe or that type of immediate emergency. They can also include such things as a robbery during business hours.

A disaster is described as a more “regional” issue that affects an area or region, although a business could experience an isolated disaster as well. Disasters include such things as a strong tropical storm or hurricane, a blizzard or heavy snow fall, an ice storm, a tornado, a gas line explosion or a break-in with damage and loss of the ability for routine operation.

The creation of both your emergency and disaster plans involve some similar planning, but the implementation of each may vary.

In an emergency such as a fire or other reason to evacuate the physical space quickly, check your smoke detectors, and the placement, accessibility and expiration dates on fire extinguishers. Conduct fire drills and practice evacuation procedures at least annually, and identify a place where all employees should gather in the event of an evacuation to ensure that everyone has escaped safely. Accredited providers document that these drills occur and look for ways, if any, that the process could be improved.

A disaster plan is more comprehensive than an emergency plan and includes such items as:

• Identifying customers at high risk if services/products are not available The patients at highest risk would always include those with oxygen or infusion services. Even some patients at low risk, such as those with wound care products, may need to be contacted prior to an impending disaster to make sure they have enough supplies on hand.
• Staff contact lists with phone numbers and email addresses There may also be a list of essential employees who are the decision-makers and who know how to implement the disaster plan. Creating and implementing telephone trees or group email lists are effective ways to contact staff in a short amount of time.
• A standardized process to back up all electronic data with copies stored off-site If you’ve ever had your computer crash, you know the importance of having back-up data.
• Local media contact information Providers in large metropolitan areas should have ready the phone numbers and contact information of local media (radio and television) in order to update the media with information that their staff can monitor.
• Delivery vehicles ready and alternates available With advance notice of impending disasters, all vehicles should be fully gassed and ready. In areas that are unaccustomed to heavy snow fall, providers often need to rent or identify four-wheel drive vehicles so that they can make deliveries into side streets and neighborhoods that do not get plowed quickly.

Most important, your emergency and disaster plans are of no value if they are only kept on site at your location and never checked or practiced. Obviously, if a disaster occurs after hours or if employees are unable to get to the business location, they need to be contacted and the plan needs to be implemented accordingly. There must be copies of the plan — including the contact numbers, telephone trees, back- up data and access to information — available outside the office.

Accreditation requirements, although they can be cumbersome at times, have concrete value and improve the business processes of an HME organization. There is no reason to implement processes and procedures blindly for the sake of meeting accreditation requirements if they have no meaning or value to your company.

Take advantage of this time in the fall, and again in the spring, to ensure that your business is prepared and ready for an emergency or a disaster. After you test your plans, correct, change or improve any components that do not work or would be ineffective now, while you have plenty of time to make things right.

Read more Accreditation Now columns.

Mary Ellen Conway, RN, BSN, is president of Capital Healthcare Group, LLC, Bethesda, Md., which provides health care management expertise in accreditation preparation and survey follow-up, operations assistance, design of quality improvement programs and outcome measures. She can be contacted by phone at 301/896-0193 or through www.capitalhealthcaregroup.com.