Welcome to the Really Ready! Newsletter your source for disaster preparedness updates and opportunities brought to you by the CA Association of Health Facilities' Disaster Preparedness Program (CAHF-DPP) |
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Do you need help addressing the new 2017 CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule, but don’t have the staff time at your facility? Welcome to the Really Ready! Newsletter – here to make your job easier by bringing you the latest emergency management training opportunities and disaster preparedness regulatory updates, right to your inbox. |
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CAHF-DPP's 2017 CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule trainings: The Disaster Preparedness Program can help you break down the new rule into manageable sections and equip you with the necessary knowledge to succeed in your next survey. Learn how to remain compliant with CMS at our one-day training, and afterwards you will be able conduct your own tabletop exercises, complete an emergency operations plan and train your staff on emergency preparedness. Check out the dates and locations below to find a training location near you - all sessions are FREE, so please register as soon as possible. April 26th, 2017 - Walnut Creek, CA: 9am-4pm, Embassy Suites May 3rd, 2017 - Downtown Los Angeles, CA: 9am-4pm, Doubletree by Hilton Hotel May 4th, 2017 - Garden Grove, CA: 9am-4pm, Wyndham Hotel Administrators: You are encouraged to bring a copy of your emergency operations plan, and the key emergency operations personnel from your facility - DONs, AITs, plant managers, etc. Please have each staff member register separately! April 27th, 2017 (11:30am PST) - CMS Final EP Rule Call: Learn what CMS has to say about the new requirements for participating in full-scale community-based exercises. ONGOING - Los Angeles County facilities: download the Disaster Resource Center meeting schedule to find your local healthcare coalition. |
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2017 CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule: Raising the Bar |
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In October 2016, CMS released its new regulations to go into effect by November 15th, 2017. However, CMS expects providers to comply with regulations by this date, or they will be out of compliance. The CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule requires that each facility must participate in a full-scale, community-based exercise such as the State Wide Medical Health Exercise (SWMHE) and a 2nd exercise (it can be a tabletop exercise) before November 15th, 2017. |
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Check out our trainings this spring, or stay tuned for our webinar series that will roll out in late summer. In addition, subscribe to our Really Ready! Newsletter all year long to bring you more information on how to satisfy the 600+ pages of new requirements for SNFs, IIDs, ICFs, etc. |
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Emergency Contacts: Can You Hear Me Now? |
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Update your emergency contact information! Not only should you have the current phone numbers for local law enforcement, fire services, and licensing, but consider also the contact information of your county’s Medical Health Operations Area Coordinator (MHOAC) – call the county’s Department of Public Health and seek out the Hospital Preparedness Program office to find out who your MHOAC is. The Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) Coordinator is also an invaluable resource during a disaster or an emergency, and can help you work with your local healthcare coalition. |
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Download the Disaster Preparedness App, where SNFs, IIDs, and localized healthcare coalitions can set up accounts and store their critical contact lists, staff assignments, and more. It is also able to operate offline by downloading its content to the smartphone itself, making crucial emergency information available when telecommunications are down. Administrators: Your contact information on the DP App is password protected and confidential – only those staff that have the facility account’s password will be able to see your facility’s uploaded content. To download, follow the directions here. |
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Lessons Learned: the Oroville Dam Evacuation |
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In February, Northern California just barely missed a catastrophic event that would have effected providers across the state – the Oroville Dam, whose emergency spillways crumbled during recent storms, endangered nearly 200,000 people and exposed the inadequacies in the emergency operations of affected long-term-care facilities. The Oroville Dam incident caught many by surprise because the evacuation orders differed from county to county, and even city to city. In particular, for facility administrators, the event began on a weekend when most were at home, separated from emergency records and documents. With transport and bed availability severely impacted, members of CAHF-DPP’s Sacramento Area SNF Mutual Aid Program (SAS-MAP) came together to aid impacted facilities desperately seeking help. Along the way, the following challenges were addressed: 1. Notification of Evacuation Lesson Learned: There was not a universal alert system used among facilities or agencies. Facilities should contact their county’s Public Health Department to find out if there is a countywide automatic emergency notification system in place, such as HavBed, CAHAN, EMSystems, ReddiNet, or a similar platform. This eliminates hours of calling to place patients and competing with other impacted facilities for the same beds. Where an automated alert system is unavailable, mutual aid networks among administrators and their county’s Medical Health Operational Area Coordinator (the MHOAC, pronounced “mohawk,”) can work together to place patients locally, or plug into neighboring county coalitions. |
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Ryan Dickerson, administrator of The Fountains facility in Yuba City, CA; an impromptu Emergency Operations Center, manned by facility staff, stood up to locate beds for 100+ residents the night of the evacuation. |
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2. Transferring Medical Records Lesson Learned: In the confusion of the evacuation, many patients were transferred without their prescriptions, health records, diet orders, or even wheelchairs. Some facilities found that when staff tried to print out e-records, not all of the needed documents were included, or there were discrepancies between e-record software systems when transferring. Many facilities successfully printed out necessary documents and safety-pinned them to each resident. |
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Practice assembling transfer packets and identifying which records will need to be transcribed into a different form, to save precious hours during an incident.For some EHR software systems, the setup of which records can be printed is done in the very beginning, during installation. |
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Contact your EHR provider to see how to ensure that transfer packets contain all of the information needed for another provider to do an emergency intake, and maintain continuity of care. |
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3. Mutual Aid Networks Lesson Learned: The Oroville Dam evacuation area was across Sutter, Yuba, and Butte counties – normally set up to assist each other as CAL-OES Operational Area Three, the entire region had to look elsewhere to place long-term care residents and patients. Other counties’ MHOACs coordinated to control transport resources and regulate the bed polling/transferring process. For example, in Sacramento County providers were calling each other to place patients, while the MHOAC was also trying to count beds and place people. |
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Participate in a formalized network or Incident Command System (ICS) to eliminate overlapping efforts by county personnel and long-term care providers. In the future, providers should work closely with their county MHOAC when seeking emergency patient transfers during an evacuation. |
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Conclusion: The impact on medical billing is still being determined from the Oroville Dam incident. To qualify for reimbursement from CMS for transfer costs and services, during an officially declared evacuation, the patient must be moved from a pre-approved location to a pre-approved destination. Not working with the county MHOAC can have dire consequences not only for your vulnerable residents, but for your reimbursement efforts as well. Working with your healthcare coalition is the first and most important step to an integrated response to disasters from facilities. Don’t wait to form these crucial relationships until an emergency happens – reach out to your local MHOAC and county healthcare coalition by contacting your county’s Public Health Department. |
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Personal Preparedness: What You and Your Staff Can Do |
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Did you know that to prepare for a disaster at work, you actually need to start at home? If your staff and/or their families are unprepared, it negatively impacts your residents because staff are either unavailable to come to work, or emotionally preoccupied while on-site. Promote personal preparedness at your facility by giving staff a short, monthly action item and ask them to report back on their progress. Print and pass out this checklist from the American Red Cross for your staff. |
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This newsletter is brought to you by the California Association of Health Facilities’ Disaster Preparedness Program (CAHF-DPP), and made possible by a grant from the California Department of Public Health. Learn more at www.cahfdisasterprep.com. |
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