Importance of Practicing Your Emergency Preparedness Plan

On January 28, 2019, McKnight’s released an article entitled, “‘This could have been a nightmare’ - evacuation plan succeeds during LTC facility’s gas disaster.” According to the article, St. Clare Newport in Rhode Island successfully evacuated all 87 of its residents last week when it lost its heat amid a regional gas outage, during single digit temperatures.  The continuing care retirement community had prepared for such circumstances previously, running drills twice a year.  You can read the full story here.

In addition to planning for natural disasters, staff and facilities must be prepared for other emergencies, such as pandemics, influenza, active shooters and more.  All emergency situations must be handled swiftly, diligently and with the utmost care for staff and patients.  AHCA/NCAL has a dedicated website page with emergency preparedness resources that we believe you will find of assistance.  The page, which can be found here, includes resources by state to information on the CMS Emergency Preparedness Final Rule that was released in 2016.  If you have any questions on the work AHCA/NCAL is doing around emergency preparedness, please contact AHCA’s Erin Prendergast for SNF and AL focuses and AHCA’s Dana Halvorson for ICF/IID related questions.