JCAHO guide helps small facilities with planning
JCAHO guide helps small facilities with planning
Goal is to help prepare for mass-casualty disasters
Although large organizations tend to have access to major resources and communitywide planning, smaller organizations often find themselves out of the loop when it comes to disaster planning.
To address this, the Joint Commission has published a new disaster planning guide, "Standing Together: An Emergency Planning Guide for America’s Communities." The goal is to help small, rural, and suburban communities prepare and respond to mass-casualty disasters such as hurricanes, floods, terrorist attacks, major infectious outbreaks, hazardous materials spills, or other catastrophic occurrences.
"One of the things we’ve found is that larger cities understand emergency management very well, but smaller ones don’t see themselves in the line of fire and often don’t do much until something occurs," says Robert Wise, MD, JCAHO’s vice president of the division of standards and survey methods.
Wise recommends sharing the guide with community disaster planners outside your organization. "I think that the ears of the hospital are often more attuned to JCAHO than the eyes of the community. So by sending this to community planners, they might be able to use it to augment their own planning," he says. (For a complete copy of the Joint Commission planning guide, go to www.jcaho.org. Click on "About Us," "Public Policy Initiatives," "Standing Together: An Emergency Planning Guide for America’s Communities.")
Smaller organizations are given specific steps to coordinate resources. "What we are asking hospitals to do is to reach out to the community. Depending on the size of the community, there may be a place for hospitals inside the community planning, or hospitals may in fact find that there is not a distinct place," says Wise. "We’ve found many communities where the hospital has attempted to reach out, but there is no place for them to sit at the Emergency Operating Center. That actually becomes quite problematic when you have a community disaster such as Katrina."
Whenever a disaster has communitywide impact, it becomes critical to know which resources are viable and to have ongoing communication, says Wise.
"The time to get to know your resources is not when a disaster is on the way," says Bob Staples, manager of safety and security at St. Joseph’s/Candler Hospital in Savannah, GA.
Quality leaders should be represented on the hospital’s safety or emergency preparedness committee and be in communication with the local emergency management agency, public health department, and other area and state hospitals.
"This is crucial — you should be meeting on a regular basis to discuss plans," says Staples. "Know their names and their emergency cell phone numbers, and don’t be shy about asking questions."
For years, hospitals have been able to deal with facility-based disasters, such as multi-car accidents or loss of power, says Wise. "The real challenge is when not only their resources are knocked out but so are the resources of many other medical asset, or those of the entire community," he says. "This is when community planning becomes critical. No organization can cope with this single-handedly."
Although large organizations tend to have access to major resources and communitywide planning, smaller organizations often find themselves out of the loop when it comes to disaster planning.Subscribe Now for Access
You have reached your article limit for the month. We hope you found our articles both enjoyable and insightful. For information on new subscriptions, product trials, alternative billing arrangements or group and site discounts please call 800-688-2421. We look forward to having you as a long-term member of the Relias Media community.