All Entries in the "Emergency management" Category

Hospital fire reveals several truths about emergency preparedness

There’s an update on a fire at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, CT, in this week’s issue of our free sister e-newsletter, Emergency Management Alert.

As a consultant, I frequently ask folks what kind of scenarios they are using to comply with EM.03.01.03, EP 3, which mandates an emergency response exercise, including an escalating scenario in which the hospital is unable to be supported by the local community.

One of the truisms I’ve observed over time is that [more]

H1N1 call brings up hospital access control, sick employees

I listened in on a CMS open forum conference call this afternoon about H1N1 preparedness in healthcare facilities, and the topic of infection control in hospitals came up.

A CDC representative noted that [more]

New fall seminars about life safety and emergency management

We’re happy to announce two brand new professional development seminars that will focus on the hot topics of Life Safety Code compliance and emergency managment: [more]

You aren’t mandated to develop departmental disaster plans

There is no Joint Commission requirement for you to have department-level emergency management plans, unless you have determined through your drilling and evaluation process that there are sufficient complexities to warrant that additional level of planning.

Based on Joint Commission standards, the only requirement is for each organization [more]

Immediate threats to life, Joint Commission style

During a keynote at the ASHE conference this afternoon, George Mills, senior engineer at The Joint Commission, outlined four immediate threats to life in the physical environment that tie into the top tier of criticality scoring: [more]

Questions raised at one hospital about adequate PPE supplies

Hi everyone, it’s Scott Wallask. My colleagues over at OSHA Healthcare Advisor blogged this week about a hospital that was butting heads with some employees regarding personal protective equipment.

The workers don’t believe the hospital has supplied enough PPE, which raises the question of what would happen to the absentee rate at this facility if a pandemic occurred. The hospital disagrees with the employees’ contention. It’s a though provoking blog post.

Michael Jackson’s death forces hospital into a lockdown

Hi folks, it’s Scott Wallask. I was chatting by e-mail with Vernon Goodwin, security director at UCLA Health System in Los Angeles, about the hundreds of people that gathered outside UCLA Medical Center after Michael Jackson’s body arrived at the hospital last Thursday.

Goodwin told me the medical center [more]

H1N1 pandemic will test your supply chains

Hi, it’s Scott Wallask. I read this passage in today’s Boston Globe about medical supplies to battle H1N1 swine flu:

Some hospitals said shelves usually brimming with surgical masks, used to slow the virus’ transmission, turned barren [more]

With a pandemic underway, watch the southern hemisphere for H1N1 clues

Hi folks, it’s Scott Wallask. My goodness, after all these years I never imagined that the official announcement of a flu pandemic from the World Health Organization (WHO) would be met with such little fanfare. I always figured such a proclamation would result in sirens ringing throughout towns and people hunkering down in their homes.

Nope. To be fair, in practical terms [more]

Developing emergency management bench strength

At hospitals I’ve worked with, the practice for emergency management training has been to develop a great deal of what I like to refer to as bench strength among senior leaders and the management team (don’t forget off-shift supervisors — 128 hours of the week are considered off-hours and you don’t want to be caught short during those times).

They have accomplished this by having organizational leaders [more]