Healthcare providers can now employ a powerful new tool in their efforts to protect patients, staff members and visitors from potential natural and man-made disasters.
Readiness Associates has unveiled its “Healthcare Facility Emergency Preparedness Self-assessment,” a 15-minute online survey that can help organizations determine just how ready they are currently for anything from a hurricane to a terrorist attack.
Since November 2017, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have required that 17 types of U.S. healthcare providers and suppliers comply with the CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule as a condition of participating in the Medicare or Medicaid program. The rule addresses four areas common to all – assessment and emergency planning, policies and procedures, emergency communications, and training and testing – and the survey focuses on each of them.
The Readiness Associates self-assessment survey asks respondents to rate 49 statements about their facilities’ readiness in a variety of areas. Readiness Associates will use their responses to help organizations identify their strengths and opportunities for improvement. Participation is voluntary, and information provided will be kept strictly confidential.
“Healthcare facilities are expected to anticipate and prepare for potential emergencies,” said Vernon Jeffery, Readiness Associates lead strategist, who developed the survey. “Whenever an emergency occurs, either natural or man-made, healthcare professionals, providers and staff members are expected to respond as a single, cohesive facility. When disaster does strike, healthcare facilities are expected to rapidly recover and get back to providing services.”
As Jeffery pointed out, the self-assessment has two primary purposes.
“First, it benefits the facility administrator, or emergency preparedness staff member,” said Jeffery. “Our self-assessment asks that person to reflect upon a wide range of considerations to assist her or him in gaining an improved mental picture of the facility’s level of emergency readiness.
“Second, it establishes a database useful for developing more effective and better-targeted emergency preparedness programming for the healthcare system in general. An anonymous version of the data submitted, thoroughly cleansed of all personal and identifying information, will be included in a broader dataset that will be used to analyze emergency preparedness trends and tendencies across the entire field of respondents.”
ABOUT READINESS ASSOCIATES
As man-made and natural disasters continue to increase worldwide, Readiness Associates is your essential preparedness and risk mitigation partner. We offer solutions that help workplaces execute a well-designed plan for immediate response anytime, anywhere. Readiness Associates’ core mission is to ensure that any organization, especially health care organizations nationally, is CMS compliant while preparing teams and their families to be: Safe. Ready. Prepared.