Integrated communications for emergency response
Integrated communications makes sense when it comes to emergency response. But what if the emergency takes down your integrated communications system?
As I think back to the many and sundry emergency response exercises I’ve been involved with over the years, the single most “reliable” failure/gap/finding/opportunity has always involved communications. To be honest, I can’t think of an instance in which communications didn’t “stumble” at least a little bit. I suppose it’s a function of the human element when connections are not quite solid, etc. Sometimes it’s not knowing who possesses the information you need; sometimes it’s not having a clear path to the Authority Having Jurisdiction. Unless your community has a truly unified command structure, you can’t always tell if the person answering the phone is the person you really need to talk to.
A recent missive from MCA entitled “How Integrated Voice, Data, and Security Solutions Create Safer Healthcare Environments” highlights ways of optimizing patient and staff experiences through the integration of voice, data and security solutions. There’s a lot of information regarding the use of these integrated solutions as a means of ensuring reliable, real-time communications across an organization. While there is certainly a lot of food for thought, I keep coming back to what happens if the integrated communications resources are disrupted. How quickly and effectively can your line staff respond to the disruption and employ downtime procedures, such as manual record-keeping, etc.
Although the integration of communications within and external to your organization is a very desirable approach to take, how robust a backup system will you need in the event your “integrated” system falls victim to whatever emergency you’re experiencing? How many layers of back-up do you need to have? How many layers of back-up can you have? More and more I see the focus in emergency management shifting to how comprehensively you can plan for the recovery phase. You need to, at the same time, be nimble enough to respond, but have enough bench strength to flex up when all you have left is the human element. I think this might be worth thinking about as you plan your next emergency exercise; maybe an isolated outage to test the response and then roll out a more pervasive disruption. One never knows how one will navigate the cascades until we’re in the middle of the rapids. Make sure everyone has a paddle and knows how to use it!
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Chartis Group. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is the author of HCPro's Hospital Safety Director's Handbook and is an advisory board member for Accreditation and Quality Compliance Center. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.