Why and when to communicate patient information with other sites

Someone asked me about my thoughts relative to Joint Commission emergency management standard EM.02.02.01, EP 11.

EP 11 establishes the expectation that in the event of a fairly widespread event (in terms of casualties and fatalities) that your emergency operations plan will have a process to communicate the names of patients to other healthcare organizations in the area.

Here’s a scenario to consider with EP 11: Suppose there’s a plane crash and I know my mother was on that plane. I come to or call your hospital because it’s one of the hospitals to which victims were transported, but you don’t have my mother there. It turns out she’s at another facility.

By having a way to share patient information with other organizations, you ensure that I can connect with my mother during the chaos even though she isn’t at your hospital.

EP 11 also mentions the need to consider under what circumstances you’ll communicate patient information. You’d probably only need to consider this during an event that “scatters” patients to different facilities, if you will. That’s when sharing this type of information can be critical.