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Case: Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response: Contingency Planning
Synopsis
The Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response was established by the Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS) in 2002. The Center’s mission is to develop and deliver services that improve healthcare planning, preparedness, and response for emergency events and disasters. It is responsible for identifying the status of emergency preparedness within the three YNHHS member hospitals (Yale-New Haven Hospital, Bridgeport Hospital, and Greenwich Hospital); preparing YNHHS to respond effectively to emergency preparedness and disaster response issues; providing leadership to healthcare delivery organizations (e.g., acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, community health centers, home health agencies, urgent care centers, emergency medical service providers, and community medical practices) and their workforce regarding emergency preparedness and disaster response issues; serving as a model for emergency preparedness and disaster response initiatives at the national and international levels; and advising statewide and national legislative and nongovernmental organizations on the development of standards and policies for emergency preparedness and disaster response in healthcare delivery organizations. These objectives are achieved through a complex of web of partnerships with healthcare delivery organizations, professional health associations, and agencies on the local, state, regional, national, and international levels. This case study focuses on the intricacies of contingency planning and disaster recovery planning
Questions
1a. How does redundancy improve the reliability of communication systems?
b. . Why is surge capacity an important element of contingency planning for healthcare delivery organizations?
Expert Answer
1a) When it comes to communication systems in emergency response and disaster recovery situations, they play an instrumental role in ensuring all the critical stakeholders are informed about the status of various contingency plans. Hence these communication systems need to be highly reliable. For it to be reliable, the list of communication nodes that currently exists in the system needs to be updated in the communications log or some other registers as followed by the organizations. Redundant nodes need to be eliminated. With the help of redundancy, the teams involved in the business continuity planning will be able to make their communications much reliable in manner.
1b) In health care delivery organizations, it is imperative to have multiple contingency planning elements in order to ensure all the emergency situations are addressed appropriately. Surge is likely an expected scenario in health care if there is a community of people who are affected by a similar symptom, there is a common health problem that occurred to several people due to weather or climatic conditions in a specific geography, pediatric care are likely to see surge capacity if there are seasonal healthcare problems among the children due to low immunity etc., These are various reasons why surge capacity is always a significant element of contingency planning for healthcare delivery based organizations.
