Integrating hospitals into community emergency preparedness planning

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Emergency Management
• Healthcare Administration

Background:

• Effective emergency preparedness for healthcare organizations relies heavily on strong community linkages.
• Assessing these linkages is crucial for understanding and improving response capabilities during crises.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the community emergency preparedness linkages between hospitals, public health officials, and first responders.
• To determine the impact of community hazards, prior national security event preparation, and disaster response experience on these linkages.

Main Methods:

• A mailed questionnaire was administered to 575 hospital representatives across the U.S. medical-surgical hospital system.
• The survey assessed linkages concerning training, equipment, surveillance, laboratory testing, surge capacity, incident management, and communication.
• A weighted analysis examined 17 basic elements of community-wide planning and participation.

Main Results:

• A high percentage of hospitals (88.2%) participated in community-wide drills and exercises, with most (82.2%) conducting collaborative threat analyses.
• While many plans addressed supply needs (57.3%) and decontamination (73.0%), direct links to the Health Alert Network (54.4%) and public health communication (40.0%) were less common.
• Better performance was observed in large, urban hospitals and was associated with greater perceived hazards, prior national security event preparation, and disaster response experience.

Conclusions:

• Hospitals perceive substantial integration in community emergency preparedness, yet relationships with public health and other response entities are not consistently robust.
• This baseline assessment highlights areas for improvement in inter-organizational collaboration for enhanced public health security.
• Further strategies are needed to strengthen these critical linkages for more effective emergency response.