Plan for Rain on Your Parade

Tropical Storm Isaac (which is not yet at hurricane strength at the time of this writing) has threatened to rain on the Republican parade at the National Convention in Tampa, Florida. The Convention organizers have already announced a shortened schedule, and a general interruption of the proceedings.
 While the Convention most likely won't be cancelled, for businesses that attend, host, sponsor, or organize conventions, expositions and large events, it's a good lesson. When your company commits valuable resources in time, effort and money into an event, ensure it also has an appropriate disaster and continuity plan. Many events around the US are interrupted or cancelled every year by natural or man-made disasters.

First, I would like to make a quick note on their relationship between event disaster plans, and comprehensive disaster plans for your business: they are not the same. The plan you have already codified for your business covers your employees, facilities and processes. Any large event should be considered a separate process from your company, and should be planned in juxtaposition to your current disaster program, whether you are an event attendee, or the event host/sponsor/organizer.

 

Event Attendee

 

Your business needs to consider its continuity in light of being an event attendee, as your loss can be significant. I knew a company that attended an annual conference in the midwest of the United States as an exhibitor. They brought large amounts of marketing materials, half their workforce, their largest truck, and samples of the product to be sold. As happens periodically, one year, a thunderstorm touched off a tornado that destroyed the truck, along with everything inside.

This became a serious problem. The company sold specialized metal beveling machines, which were purchased from one vendor overseas. That vendor was backlogged with orders, so it was over a month before the company could fulfill their existing orders, which meant those customers went to their competitors.

Furthermore, with half the workforce displaced, the company had a very difficult time rebounding. Insurance money did not cover overtime costs for their employees, and the loss of revenue stream was significant for a company like this in a niche market.

Event Sponsor/Host/Organizer

 

If you are the sponsor of the event, or host a recurring large gathering, your event preparedness should be a permanent addendum to your current plan. This is particularly true if your company is a non-profit or a trade association, because confidence in your ability to host the event is the critical factor in the draw for companies to attend. Questions your company should be asking include:

• What happens if your event has half the number of participants because of a disaster?
• What if they ask for refunds?
• What if they withdraw from the vendor exposition contract because of a storm, flood, earthquake or some other interruption?

 

And it isn’t just these natural risks that can affect your event. If your organization is tainted by a scandal, or some act of corruption, you can expect that your lead sponsors will pull out of your event.

Your disaster plan needs to have a contingency for your event so that it doesn’t sink your entire organization. Insurance may cover certain perils, but it will not cover loss of reputation, or the damage of future loss of revenue, or loss of potential clients.

 

Event Disaster Plan Considerations


Your event disaster plan needs to consider a number of elements. However, that plan should not be constructed in isolation. Your company’s overall disaster plan should be tied in closely to your event plan, discussing:

• Alternate Sites
• Crisis Communication
• Insurance (especially any covered and uncovered perils)
• Information Technology Contingencies
• Site Vendor Coordination

Your company should adopt a rule: if one is disaster plan is activated, the other should be activated.  This is because they will affect one another as you shift resources, personnel and money to one or the other as you reverse the disaster.

There is one other consideration for any event disaster plan. If your event takes place outside the jurisdiction of where your company is physically located, that means you will need to establish new relationships with the local government, first responders, etc.

These are not tertiary or unimportant relationships!

If there is a disaster at your event, and you have not consult the authorities, you are asking for trouble. Jurisdictions do not take kindly to event planners that ignore them because they will take the heat from the media and the public for any problems that arise. I remember when I was an EMT for an event at a large convention center some years ago. There were just two of us, with one ambulance, and a second backup crew. As the event progressed, we became overwhelmed and couldn’t handle the flow of participants coming out of the facility needing assistance.

The reason? Many of those at the event had checked out of cancer wards and hospices to receive some type of religious healing. When that did not work, we EMTs were stuck trying to get these people back home. The City was very unhappy that the organizers had not informed us of the demographic attending, which drew away resources from other 911 calls and emergency medical responsibilities.

Conclusion

Your company may have a terrific disaster plan, but if it is not also including those events you attend, sponsor, host, or organize, you are inviting a greater potential for business interruption. Make sure your business continuity company is planning accordingly. This is the only way to Reverse Disaster.

Patrick Hardy, CEM, ALEM, LL.M.

How does FEMA fit in?

I have no regrets saying that as an undergraduate I was a strongly-leaning libertarian. And I was vocal, too. As a political scientist, I had a lot of opportunities to inject myself into our Socratic Dialogues and make my opinions known about the postal service, social programs and NATO. I don’t know how my professors and colleagues put up with me, but they all showed remarkable restraint in not taking the bait (most of the time).

What makes that all the more ironic is that this year I officially became a federal bureaucrat. I accepted a rotation as the first business owner as the Private Sector Representative to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). That role was originally set up by the Private Sector Division of FEMA to establish constructive relationships between the government and private industry in a disaster.

I accepted the rotation because I felt as though FEMA has a role to play in how companies respond to a disaster. This is the first part of an occasional series on FEMA and how they can assist you and your business in Reversing Disaster.

1. Money

This is the one people love to talk about, because the concept of “free money” is such a temptation, but it is also the one most subject to mismanagement and abuse. Remember the debit card-debacle in New Orleans? That was not an aberration. FEMA misallocates millions of dollars every year, and creates perverse incentives for people to do unsafe and reckless things. 

However, as a business owner, FEMA assistance can go a long way to help your employees and their families, so you can get back into business faster. FEMA offers a lot of different types of assistance for them which can supplement income, and provide temporary housing assistance.

2. Information


In my personal experience, this is something that FEMA does well…assuming you can find it. While I feel like FEMA information is mostly helpful, they have had a lot of trouble in the past with dissemination. Very rarely does FEMA provide a single-bottom line and communicate it well. This is the reason why the national press quickly catches on that the national office representatives and the field personnel are not singing from the same sheet of music.

For business, though, FEMA can provide information on mitigation measures, response activities, and provide safety information for you and your employees. They liaise with all the local and state agencies and responders, so you can minimize the risks to your employees and clients. They can also act as a conduit, in the sense that they can usually help you find the information you need on road closures, assistance updates, sheltering activities, etc. 


3. Crisis Counseling


Counseling after a disaster is not a new iteration. The Red Cross and other agencies were doing some kind of spiritual or psychological counseling for victims of disasters and wars since the First World War. FEMA now provides crisis counseling alongside these agencies, as they are able to mobilize mental health professionals quickly and efficiently to a disaster area.

In your company, your people are your most important asset. If you are a single-person business, the most important asset is you. And, of course, you need to be in a rational, steady-state of mind if you hope to keep your business continuous. You should know your limits and those of your employees so that they are not placed with undue stress

FEMA and other disaster counseling can help. The counseling is free, and could go a long way for your employees who are concerned about their family and friends. For example, disasters are very distressing events for children under almost any circumstances. Parents, guardians and other relatives can also be placed under additional stress from a disaster, and the counseling can provide a relief for them.

Conclusion


What is critical to remember is that FEMA cannot be all things to all people. Don’t expect it to be your Mommy or Daddy after a disaster strikes. They can only do so much.  By recognizing their strengths, and their limitations, you will find that FEMA does have a place in your disaster response. Utilize some of these resources available as they can be of great benefit to you and to your employees as you Reverse Disaster.

Patrick Hardy

Threat #2 (National Planning Scenarios) – Major Hurricane

June 1, 2012 was the inaugural day of the 2012 Hurricane Season. With that, I felt as though it would be appropriate to create an entry for a Major Hurricane. For many people living on the East Coast of the US, the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes are a way of life. Luckily, however, for many other people in the US and abroad, the threat of a hurricane of any type is so remote as to be virtually impossible. 

I grew up in Orange County, California, where I am not sure I knew how to spell hurricane until I was 18. The conditions for a hurricane have to be just right: the temperature of the ocean, the wind, the humidity, the currents and the type of ocean topography all play a role. And, let me just say: on all fronts, California just doesn't have it.

My grandparents (rest their souls) lived on the islands of Hawaii, where the climate is humid and is perfect for hurricanes. But even there, storms of that type are relatively rare. However, when I graduated college, I soon found myself in Baton Rouge, Louisiana as a novice emergency manager, and discovered an entirely new type of disaster.

If you had the opportunity to view any of the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Andrew, or any of the other major hurricanes that has struck in the last couple decades, you probably have a taste for their destructive potential.  However, like any major disaster, I tell people that they don’t fully comprehend an event unless they are actually there, experiencing it firsthand.

My third week living in Louisiana, the state was hit with a Category 1 hurricane. What I noticed about it was the completely anti-climactic nature of it. I was expecting complete devastation, flooded streets, and FEMA debit cards. What we got was…nothing. A little rain, a little wind, and that’s it. The lights were on, internet was working, and I went to work as normal.

Hurricanes severity is measured by the Saffir-Simpson Scale. The scale measures 1-5, with 1 being the lowest end and ascending in severity to a 5. Typically, a “Major Hurricane” is defined as a 3 or higher.

A couple summers ago, I was training a group of engineers about hurricanes in the Panhandle of Florida. One of the participants approached me later and said, “You know, I don’t even stop mowing my lawn unless it’s a 3 or higher.” To the rest of us, that may seem a bit cavalier, but that is the typical mindset for residents of Florida.

The reason for that is pretty simple: Florida gets them a lot.

Hurricanes typically give a long lead-time before landfall. We can now track storms all the way from their genesis out in Africa (where they begin to form off the coast) to their dissipation point. Sometimes the storms don’t make landfall at all. For example, the 2010 Hurricane Season was one of the least active, while 2005 one of the most active.

While the Gulf of Mexico is known as the hotbed for hurricanes, they can easily strike the East Coast. In fact, until Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst known hurricane landfalls struck New York City in the 1930’s. It almost single-handedly ground that city to a halt, and caused immense chaos. This was about 50 years before FEMA, but was an event that spearheaded the movement in the US for a more organized government response to disasters.

As a business owner, your employees need to have a family disaster plan. Hurricanes are incredibly disruptive events for your business.  Make sure your operations are reinforced with the following:

Emergency Response Plan

Make sure your plan covers a major emergency, and has contingencies for evacuations and communications. Remember, phone lines may be out, cell phone towers may be knocked down, and things may be difficult. Redundant communication methods are the key.

Business Continuity Plan

Make sure your BCP contains the operational contingency plans. Your facilities may be damaged, and I can 100% guarantee that you will be disrupted.

Training

Of course, your employees need to be trained on communications and hazards. But they also need to know your company's policies. They need to know what you expect from them when disaster strikes.

Exercises

If you live in a hurricane area, you should be running at least one exercise per year (preferably in the March/April area). The exercise should be for a major hurricane, should include flooding, and incorporate local responders. In your area, your local emergency management agency will hold an annual exercise. Work closely with them.

Certification 

Like clockwork, every March or so, I start to see advertisements for disaster planners who are selling disaster programs. Do NOT invest in any disaster plan that does not have a Certified Emergency Manager and Certified Business Continuity Professional. Otherwise, you roll the dice with quality.

Conclusion

Remember, that very disruptive events like a Major Hurricane can be the crucible test for your business. It has the potential to disperse your employees, erode the infrastructure, create confusion, and prevent you from reopening quickly. Make sure your disaster program is ready for it. This is the only way to Reverse Disaster.

Patrick Hardy

Why does a business need a disaster plan?

Two weeks ago I was mixing with a crowd of chamber of commerce members, and I started talking to a guy who ran a local barber shop. I told him what I did, and he told me that he didn’t need disaster planning services, because he had insurance.

"So why does a business need one?" he asked. Oh boy.

There are a lot of reasons, of which just a few are below. What he doesn’t realize is that insurance just isn’t enough.  Don’t believe me? Just ask the businesses of New Orleans what they think. Insurance is a wonderful tool that can assist in controlling or financing risk, but it isn’t something to supplant a good disaster plan.


Recovering Operations

If your operations are interrupted as a result of a disaster, it is critical that you get those back on track as soon as possible. Simply stated, if your critical processes aren’t recovered, there is no way you can go back to making money, and without a disaster plan, there is no way for you to get back into business. Companies have tried for years to avoid disaster planning, and there is just no way around it.

Think about it in terms of your business: Would you start thinking how to develop your product after you got your first order for one? Of course not, that would be crazy. So why would you do that in a disaster?

Consider this as well: If you lose customers to the disaster, do you think they will come back to you?

Loss of income insurance only goes so far, and the covered perils aren’t always the ones your company is likely to face. In one of the Gulf Coast disaster areas where I worked a couple years ago, there was a beach wedding photography studio with 5-7 full-time employees.

When the disaster struck, the beaches were complexly quarantined and isolated. The studio executives had no idea what to do, but they tried to make alternate arrangements for the bookings they already had. Unfortunately, that was too late. About a year later, I found out the company had gone out of business and faced an equity loss of almost half a million dollars.


Protecting Employees


If you have employees (or are a single-person business) you owe it to them to have a plan in place. Many, if not all, your employees are relying on you to continue to be in business so that they can continue to make money. During a disaster, a family will be stretched financially and will require that income. If they don’t get it, there is a domino effect of losses from business to person.

Ironically, the problem could be the exact opposite, where employers are expecting employees to come in without communicating that to their workforce. A few years ago, I worked with a graphic design company that nearly found itself in legal jeopardy after they fired two employees because they didn’t show up to work after a disaster.

The employees were living in a rural area where cell service was almost nonexistent as a result of disrupted communication towers. The company was so infuriated that they didn’t come to work that they sent nasty termination e-mails. Within a week, though, the employees were threatening litigation, and the company relented. It was soon after that I got a call from them inquiring about a disaster plan.


Protecting Property

It is well-known that the majority of the damage during Hurricane Katrina occurred after the hurricane had left New Orleans. It was the flood waters and the resulting deluge that caused the majority of the property damage. This is why a good disaster plan can keep you out of trouble. A plan that determines evacuation of employees and property, and adequately budgets for resource protection and supplies has the best chance to mitigate damage after a disaster.

When I was growing up in Orange County, we were told to get sand-bags and prepare for possible flooding during El Niño, which is a weather system that periodically strikes California. I remember as a child wondering why people needed sand bags when we had the beach not 50 yards away! As an adult, I would ask why people didn’t buy the bags beforehand, and have an executed plan for filling them, and placing them in the most vulnerable areas of their property.


Conclusion


Remember, disaster planning is not just something you do after disaster strikes. Whether you are a barber, a wedding photographer or a graphic design company, your operations, employees, and customers are relying on you. Remember, if you aren’t there to fill orders and provide services, there will be another company with a disaster plan that will be ready to steal your clients, all because they had a better method to Reverse Disaster.

The Indictment of Disaster Plan Templates

I was speaking to a group of museum owners in the Northeast a couple years ago, and, after the presentation was over, a group of them asked me about a disaster plan template they had purchased.  I have very strong feelings about this subject, so I said, “Get rid of it. It’s worthless. It’s worse than worthless; it’s detrimental to your program.”

They were a bit shocked with how forthright I was; however, I wanted to be blunt, because univerally, my professional experience has demonstrated that:  


Templates are ineffective disaster plans. Period.

I still see this a lot with companies that are trying to save a few bucks, because they are cheap, fill-in-the-blank disaster planning solutions. But, unequivocally, these provide a false sense of security, because experience has shown in disaster after disaster that these do not work, for a myriad of reasons.


Templates Don’t Account for Changes

This may not seem like a big deal, but in practice, it is one of the largest drawbacks of a template. Depending on the size and complexity of your business, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds) of variables that can change in a short period of time.

Employees, clients, new building contracts, homeland security policies and even a new fleet of company vehicles can have a massive impact on your planning calculus. Circumstances, policies, procedures and strategy can also change with critical vendors or even the government.  Your plan must take account for these changes, because they can have a huge operational impact when faced with a disaster.


Templates Don’t Account for Evolving Threats


Every plan has to have, as a foundation; certain set of threats it uses as a guide for responding and recovering. However, it does not account for unique community factors that will either make that disaster more devastating, or more likely to occur.

For example, communities in the US can either have underground or over-ground electricity wires. The ground soil could also be permeable, semi-permeable, non-permeable, and could have the composition of a dozen different compounds that would have a massive impact on the likelihood of, and extent of disasters occurring, including: flash flooding, erosion, wildfires, ground collapses, engineering disasters, or tornados.



Templates Don’t Account for Training


When I worked for a coffee chain as a young man, I was asked to train the staff on the disaster plan, since they noticed I had a propensity for speaking and an interest in disasters. So I trained the staff, and told each one individually that at some point they needed to read up on the evacuation routes embedded in the plan so they knew the best route to get home.

I intentionally omitted the evacuation route in the training so that I could conduct a little experiment. On that same page, I put a $10 bill and said “if you are reading your evacuation route, you can take this $10”. After 6 months, I retrieved the money; presumably, not a single person had read it.  Templates provide zero accountability on this factor.

Templates Don’t Account for Regulatory Requirements


If you run a business in an industry with a regulatory requirement for a disaster plan (or a derivative such as an EAP, ERP, BCP, IT/DR), a template will not only be operationally defunct, but they can also put you in legal jeopardy.  This is particularly true if you actually experience a disaster which results in injuries or property damage.

State and Federal regulatory agencies have held hundreds of facilities accountable for inadequate disaster plans with fines and criminal sanctions. Civil actions would not be far behind, which could keep you in courts for years.

We call these templates “checkbox” disaster plans, because they are used to meet the bare minimum requirements under a regulation or statute. In some cases, facilities purchase a template, but don't even bother filling in the blanks! You can imagine how effective that plan is when disaster strikes.

Conclusion


Perhaps inevitably, my words came back around to haunt me. About a week after my museum presentation, I got a phone call from the planner who had created the template, who was more than a little annoyed at my comments. You can guess the outcome of that conversation.

While I can respect that companies are trying to save a few dollars, don't waste your company's money with a useless disaster plan. They provide a false sense of security, and ignore the realities of a robust disaster program, which requires training, a good exercise program and evaluation measure.

Don’t be fooled; a template is simply not the way to Reverse Disaster.

Threat #1 (National Planning Scenarios) – Improvised Nuclear Device

An Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) can describe either: a nuclear device that has been modified from an existing weapon, or can be one that is constructed from parts of devices.

It is important to differentiate them from Radiological Dispersion Devices (RDD) (otherwise known as “dirty bombs”) because, in the latter case, the purpose is to disperse radiological particles using a conventional explosive like dynamite or TNT. In that case, there isn’t a nuclear reaction. An RDD will create an explosion like any other.

Courtesy: Department of Homeland Security

An IND, by contrast, creates a nuclear explosion like those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (mushroom cloud), because it is a radiological chain reaction and will be vastly different from an explosion from TNT. The detonation of an IND is a major catastrophe of an almost apocalyptic scope. The explosion of an IND in a major city would raze dozens, or (depending on the yield) hundreds of square blocks.


Plan

Like any other explosion, an IND will cause casualties, damage buildings, and disrupt utilities and essential services. However, as you put together your plan with your disaster manager, you should keep a few unique things in mind:

• If an IND is detonated near your facility, work will cease indefinitely. The number of casualties and the pace of destruction will be such that economic activity will grind to a halt until order is restored;
• If an IND is detonated in the US but not near your facility, work will essentially cease for a few days as fear and panic sets in awaiting the government response.
• The risk is not just from the explosion itself, but also from the nuclear fallout that results from the detonation;
• Do not rush your employees back to work, and consider that friends and family may be affected. 
• Roads may be closed, and other commercial activities involving transportation will almost certainly be halted.
• Government functions, public sector activities, and contractual obligations (both buying and selling) will be suspended.
   
• Employees may have severe psychological trauma, trouble concentrating, or experience phobias. Be prepared to activate the EAP.
  

Train


I recognize that training your staff on how to respond to a nuclear weapon explosion will probably result in a few smiles and side-jokes. When we train our clients, we do our best to make the training relevant, but not too “doom and gloom”.

Courtesy: United States Army

If you decide to do your own training, make sure you be very careful of the wording you use, and don’t make it too company-centric. If you have medical staff, they all need to be trained on the medical effects of a nuclear reaction detonation, including (but not limited to):

• Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary Injuries as applied to a nuclear explosion
• Blast Wave and Overpressure;
• Radiation Exposure and Contamination;
• Delayed effects of acute radiation exposure;
• Specific organ effects depending on where a given isotope is incorporated;
• Carcinogenesis;
• Psychological effects.

Conclusion

Thankfully, this is a threat that has a remote chance of occurring. Unlike what the movies portray, a nuclear weapon is a highly sophisticated machine that requires incredibly specialized skills and equipment to design and build.

Furthermore, even if a group were able to get the blueprint for one, they would have to acquire the radiological materials, properly harness them (without getting killed from radiation poisoning), and procure all the other machinery necessary to properly administer and maintain the weapon before the radiological materials broke down into their half-lives. 

However, an IND event should remain a planning scenario for your business, because, if that terrible day does come, it may be the only way you can effectively Reverse Disaster.

Patrick Hardy

phardy@hytropy.com

Twitter: @hytropy

Facebook: Hytropy

Special: How prepared are US nursing homes for disasters?

This is an article I wrote with a colleague about disaster preparedness for nursing homes and long-term living facilities.


Introduction


How prepared for disaster are the nation’s nursing homes?  The last thing nursing home operators should be worried about is exposure to legal liability because of failure to comply with industry best practices in disaster compliance, but many more facilities are at risk than one would have thought. 


National Deficiencies in Preparedness


The recently released 2012 Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General report indicates serious deficiencies in nursing home planning and preparedness nationwide.   

In 2006 the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report indicating that, while the majority of the nation’s nursing homes had written Emergency Operations Plans in place, many of the plans lacked provisions recommended by planning experts. 

In response, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued guidance checklists for emergency planning of health care facilities, long-term care (LTC) ombudsman programs, and State survey agencies (SA). 

Medicare and Medicaid have long required nursing homes to meet minimum standards, including having a written emergency plan, meeting minimum training thresholds, and developing contingency plans for facilities to qualify to receive federal funding for their patients.

The 2006 and 2012 reports found that the majority of nursing homes had written plans.  This is no surprise as there are commercially available off the shelf plans that allow a facility administrator to simply fill in the blanks.  So-called “checkbox” emergency plans are rarely successful, because the process of developing a plan is multi-tiered. 


Incomplete Disaster Programs


True contingency planning means working off a set of potential scenarios, identifying and mitigating hazards, assessing and developing alternative methods of addressing risks, and then writing a plan that makes as much intuitive sense to employees and residents as possible. 

The plan itself, however, is not the finish line.  An effective disaster program requires training and regular exercising for success. 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) responded to the shortfall found in the 2006 report by creating a checklist of best practices for nursing homes and assisted care facilities to follow in developing their preparedness plans. 

The CMS checklist was not enshrined as federal law, but was to serve as guidance for how plans should be crafted and the range of issues to which they should respond.

The 2012 OIG report indicates that serious deficiencies remain in the area of disaster preparedness in nursing homes across the United States.  The largest shortfall was in the area of the CMS checklist itself – with many of the nursing homes only including about half of the relevant information from the CMS checklist.

Nursing homes had unreliable transportation contracts, almost no collaboration with local emergency management officials and little planning for residents who developed health problems during the emergency.  State and local agencies designed to support nursing homes had little contact with residents until after the disaster had passed and the contacts that did occur were usually centered on compliance-oriented concerns rather than on assisting in the provision of services. 


Designing an Effective Program



Any competent disaster manager will tell you that contingency planning and training are critical to effective disaster response.  Ultimately, the OIG has developed a set of recommendations to revise Federal law to set specific requirements for nursing home emergency operations plans and training and has encouraged the Administration on Aging to develop a set of model Policies and Procedures. 

Alone, this will not be enough.

There is no question that nursing home (or any business) needs specialized guidance on implementing an effective disaster and emergency planning.  For example, conducting a thorough hazard analysis (which is a precursor to the design of a disaster plan) would be an immeasurably difficult and frustrating process without the assistance of a trained and experienced emergency manager; much less developing a robust risk assessment and developing a plan to prepare for and respond to hazards. 

Experience and best practices have demonstrated time and again that these are the minimum critical elements of an effective disaster program:

• Identifying hazards specific to the facility;
   
• Assessing risks specific to the facility (these are not the same as the hazards);
  
• Developing a robust emergency/disaster plan that addresses how to mitigate, prepare, respond and recover from hazards and risks specific to the facility;
  
• Designing an employee-wide training program, with regular exercises to test the disaster program’s effectiveness;
  
• Implementing a system of regular updates to prevent it from going obsolete.

Ensuring Complaince

Furthermore, because this industry is heavily regulated, an attorney who specializes in this type of compliance should “vet” the plan entirely. Putting aside the potential loss of life, failing to adequately prepare your facility to the Best Practices of the industry (i.e., at a minimum following the CMS guidance checklist, adequately training staff, exercising the plan and adequately preparing for contingencies) opens the facility up to legal liability for any harm that results from ill-planning. 

Simply meeting Title 22 standards will not be enough to insulate the facility or its parent companies from legal liability for failure to comply with industry Best Practices.  Also, failure to meet new Title 22 standards, when they are drafted and signed into law, will expose the facility to K-tagging, administrative letters and potentially the loss of Federal and state funding sources for patients/clients.

In short, by failing to comply with industry best practices, operators of nursing homes and assisted care facilities not only put their residential clients at risk, but also put themselves and their livelihoods at risk.


What Can Be Done Immediately


While you should hire an experienced emergency manager to design and implement your disaster program and have it reviewed by an attorney for compliance, there are a few things a nursing home or long-term living facility can do immediately to increase their level of compliance and reduce the likelihood of your disaster program failing when disaster strikes:

• Call every one of the emergency contact numbers to ensure the numbers are correct;
  
• Examine your agreements for transporting and housing residents forced to evacuate your facility;
  
• Conduct a fire drill. While this does not compensate for a complete disaster exercise, at least you can get an idea of emergency response awareness;
  
• Schedule a training for your staff on the basic protocols of your plan;
  
• Clean the plan up. If you have purchased a template (which is not an acceptable long-term solution), ensure there aren’t any blank spaces.

These are by no means plenary; however, they may at least provide a jump start for your disaster program. Your facility is a critical disaster partner, taking care of some of the most vulnerable individuals in the community.

The national trend still points to facilities not remaining ready for disasters that may strike.  Don’t be one of them. The amount you spend on constructing an effective disaster management program that is compliant with all the applicable laws could in the long run save money, prevent property damage, and save lives.


Jude Egan is California based attorney with a practice area in Title 22 compliance for nursing homes.  Please contact him at: jude@judeeganlaw.com.

www.judeeganlaw.com


Patrick Hardy is a Certified Emergency Manager® and Advanced Level Emergency Manager® who works with nursing home and long-term living facilities.  Please contact him at: phardy@hytropy.com.


Patrick Hardy

phardy@hytropy.com

Twitter: @hytropy

Facebook: Hytropy