Emergency Preparedness
Residex offers tools that can be used to create a customized emergency plan for your facility, track emergency resources, execute emergency drills, and document all activities related to emergency preparation.
Emergency Preparedness Planning (EPP)
Emergency preparedness planning is an important administrative task for health care settings. Residex allows users to develop their own emergency plan based upon requirements set forth in the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services State Operations Manual, Appendix Z. We will guide you through the process of completing audits in Residex that will drive your policies and, ultimately, create your emergency preparedness plan. In addition, staff orientation, training, tasks, and ongoing audits can keep your facility plan up-to-date and compliant.
Step 1: Hazard Vulnerability Assessment - Identifying Your Unique Risks
To get started, you will need to complete a Hazard Vulnerability Assessment (HVA) that is in line with the emergency preparedness guidelines specific to your region. Contact your local or regional emergency planning coordinator for tools and guidance in performing this step. Your facility, by virtue of its location in the country, proximity to hazards (train tracks, nuclear reactors, etc.), will have its own unique needs identified based upon this assessment.
A campus document type 'Emergency Preparedness' Admin > Documents > Emergency Preparedness has been created to allow you to upload your completed Hazard Vulnerability Assessment (HVA) as well as any other documents relating to emergency preparedness planning.
Step 2: Emergency Planning Policies
A policy category of 'Emergency Preparedness' Admin > Policies/Procedures > Emergency Preparedness has been created to allow you to save any current policies and procedures you have that relate to emergency planning. In addition, our next steps will guide you in creating emergency preparedness policies and the emergency preparedness plan that are compliant with Appendix Z requirements, as previously mentioned.
Step 3: Emergency Planning Audits - Creating policies and the Emergency Preparedness Plan
To complete emergency preparedness audits navigate to Clinical > Audits.
There are two types of audits:
1. EP Policy Development
- EPP - Building / Alternate Source of Energy
- EPP - Communication Plan
- EPP - Evacuation Plan
- EPP - Missing Resident Plan
- EPP - Shelter in Place Plan
- EPP - System of Medical Documentation
- EPP - Volunteers in an Emergency
Completion of these first seven audits will automatically create Emergency Planning policies and procedures AND also create the final Emergency Preparedness Plan report. Your plan now has been created… but there’s more!
By clicking the "push to policy" button at the bottom of the EP audit, the audit, now a policy, will automatically push out to all facility staff for acknowledgement. The policy can be reviewed by navigating to Admin > Policies/Procedures.
2. EP Policy Drills
In addition to those audits above, there are audits that can be used for ongoing documentation of emergency drills.
- Fire Drill Audit
- After-Action Review of an Emergency or Drill
- Emergency Preparedness Plan / Program - Review
Step 4 - Emergency Organizations and associated Memorandums of Understanding
Emergency Preparedness Management Officials should be added in Residex, clearly identifying all those organizations and resources that you coordinate with in case of emergency. Navigate to Residents > Resources > New Organization > enter as type Emergency Preparedness Management Officials, EP Transfer Facility, or EP Transportation.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency officials (FEMA)
- State emergency management officials
- County and local emergency officials
- Ombudsman’s office
- Others identified
EP Transportation identifies the resource/s you have for transportation of residents in an evacuation scenario. Enter data about your transportation resources, and then you'll be able to print a Memorandum of Understanding report by going to Reports > Category: Emergency Preparedness > 'Memorandum of Understanding - Transportation.'
EP Shelter / Lodging would be those facilities, motels, hotels, or other resources with whom you have a memorandum of understanding and to whom your residents would be evacuated. Again, once you've identified them in Resources, you can print out a report called Memorandum of Understanding - Shelter / Lodging.
Step 5 - Identifying your Emergency Preparedness Coordinator
Navigate to staff profiles and apply a tag of ‘Emergency Preparedness Coordinator’ to the staff member in charge of coordination. Once set in Residex, this can ensure that you would be alerted if an emergency preparedness coordinator was made inactive.
Step 6: Reminders and Tasks for Ongoing Emergency Planning Activities
Residex 'Tasks' allow you to set up reminders of ongoing emergency planning tasks. We have created EP task types for you. Navigate to Admin > Tasks > New Task. Here you can assign emergency planning tasks to the appropriate emergency planning coordinator or staff person at your facility. Why tasks? Because you can assign this to an individual person and these tasks will remain on that person’s Today > Assignments screen until they are completed. In addition, you can easily view outstanding / uncompleted tasks across your database on a dashboard. All of this can help you stay compliant with reviews and drills.
The tasks required:
- EP - Additional Annual Exercise
- EP - Annual Training. This is for all staff (review of the EPP/Policies and Procedures)
- EP - Communication Plan Review / Update
- EP - Fire Drill
- EP - Full Scale Exercise
- EP - Generator Inspection
- EP - Generator Testing
- EP - Plan / Program Review Annually - reviewing and updating all
- EP - Policies Review / Update. This should be done annually.
Step 7: Reports
A plethora of EP reports can be found by navigating to Reports > Category: Emergency Preparedness. Familiarize yourself with these reports!
Step 8: Training Staff
In addition to the initial creation of your emergency preparedness policies, as mentioned in step 3, and the ability to automatically push the policies to facility staff for review, you able to navigate to the staff profile > Populate Policies for new hires.
Staff emergency plan training can be documented in Residex by navigating to Staff > In-Service Training > Add training. Under Training select Emergency Preparedness. Record the trainer’s name, mode of training, length of training, and enter notes and select the names of staff that attended the training. This will populate to each staff’s in-service training record.
It is important that all of the people involved in emergency planning are trained, including any volunteers. We encourage you to add the names of these volunteers as staff in Residex, and we’ve created a provider type of ‘Volunteer’ just for this purpose. Note that volunteers will not appear on a staff roster and have limited access to Residex.
Step 9 - Ongoing Monitoring Using the Emergency Dashboard
Once created, we want you to be able to effectively manage and monitor your emergency plan and process. Residex's Emergency Dashboard will allow you to see important information such as your staff list with contact information and emergency planning resources information, and the EP Planning Dashboard alerts you to missing parts of your EP plan, including resources, audits, and drills. We’ve compiled a group of reports we feel will be helpful!
Emergency Preparedness Plan Maintenance
According to CMS guidelines the emergency preparedness plan must be reviewed and updated at least annually. It is also expected that all facilities make the appropriate changes to their emergency program in the event changes are required more frequently outside of their update cycles. This periodic review must be documented to include the date of the review and any updates made to the emergency plan based on the review. Although there are no set guidelines on how the plan must be reviewed, Residex recommends the following:
Navigate to Clinical > Audits choose the audit you wish to review and update, scroll to the bottom and click Open Audit. Review and make changes to the questions as needed. Each change will be date/time stamped and include the reviewers name. Once finished reviewing click Save Changes and then click Complete. Next you will need to click Push to Policy. By clicking the 'Push to Policy' button at the bottom of the EP audit, the audit, now a policy, will automatically push out to all facility staff for acknowledgement. The policy can be reviewed by navigating to Admin > Policies/Procedures and will display the most recent reviewer's name along with the date and time in the 'Last Updated By' column.
It is important to ensure that each of the following audits are reviewed and updated as necessary.
EPP - Building / Alternate Source of Energy
EPP - Communication Plan
EPP - Evacuation Plan
EPP - Missing Resident Plan
EPP - Shelter in Place Plan
EPP - System of Medical Documentation
EPP - Volunteers in an Emergency