Welcome to the Really Ready! Newsletter – bringing you the latest emergency management training opportunities and disaster preparedness regulatory updates, right to your inbox.

 Upcoming Opportunities  

California Department of Public Health - Statewide Events:

October 29th, 1pm - 2pm - Webinar: CAHF's Statewide Exercise Walkthrough (CAHF event)

Are you feeling a bit fuzzy on how to conduct and document your exercise for this year's medical-health exercise? Whether you plan to hold a functional, full-scale, or tabletop exercise, join us for this one-hour webinar where we will review the general scenario that the state CDPH exercise committee has prepared. Keep in mind that your county may have chosen a different scenario than the state-level template, or customized the template to your local geographic area. Webinar attendees can still gain a better understanding of the requirements for completing a successful exercise, and earn one hour of BRN and NHAP Continuing Education. Register here! 

Late February 2020 - Dates TBD: CAHF-DPP's Statewide Emergency Preparedness Trainings Return!

Save the last week of February on your calendar, because CAHF's Disaster Preparedness Program is hitting the road to host two trainings for our CDPH grant! Locations and final dates still being worked out, but we will be hosting one training in SoCal and one in NorCal. Participants will earn five (5) free Continuing Education credits (BRN, NHAP) and lunch will be served for attendees. We will discuss the Nursing Home Incident Command System, and conduct a tabletop exercise using IMT vests and a clinically relevant scenario. Registration will open in December 2019. Bookmark our website's Events page to check back for updates. 

November 21st, All-Day: Statewide Medical Health Exercise (CDPH event)

This is the annual exercise for California's healthcare providers to practice their Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs). CDPH-EPO provides the Situation Manual and other exercise materials, and sends out e-alerts on CAHAN on the day of the exercise. The annual exercise takes place on the third Thursday of November every year - add this statewide exercise to your calendar today! Sign up for CAHAN here.

Los Angeles County Events:

October 1st, 10am - 11am: "LA County DRC Updates" Webinar Series (CAHF Event)

Join us every other month to recap the current events from LA County's Disaster Resource Centers. Prepare for upcoming County exercises, and review best practices for emergency preparedness. For October 1st's presentation, we will be reviewing the county's Exercise Participant Seminar from September 24th, and discuss how to use the exercise documents and ReddiNet to participate. Register here. 

October 24th, 9am - 3:30pm: LA County Nursing Home Incident Command System (NHICS) Training & Tabletop Exercise (CAHF event)

The registration for this class has already been filled. If you wish to be added onto the wait list, email Cortney Kesterson. Please note that there are already over a dozen people on the waiting list. We appreciate everyone's overwhelming interest in this class and we will be back in SoCal in February 2020 to offer this class once more! 

November 21st, 9am - 12pm: LA County Medical-Health Exercise (County event, enacted at your facility)

Register for the LA County Medical Health Exercise before October 31st to participate in your community's annual full-scale exercise. This exercise is meant to take place in your own facility to simulate the emergency scenario. Register here.

BREAKING: CMS Maintains Requirement for Annual Exercises for LTC Providers 

Recently, CMS hinted that long-term care facilities may get a reprieve on the existing requirement for two annual disaster exercises under the 2016 Emergency Preparedness Rule. However, it appears that other provider types will receive this break while long-term care facilities will be held to the annual standard. This means that long-term care facilities must still participate in a community-based full-scale exercise and conduct a second disaster exercise annually, complete with separate After Actions Reports (AAR) and Improvement Plans (IP). Providers will want to maintain three years of the reports and other documentation of the disaster exercises for survey time. To read the full article on this topic in McKnight's, click here. You can view the longer CMS Newsroom article here. To go to CAHF-DPP's webpage on exercise material and report templates, click here. If you are an LA County provider, you will want to go to our LA County webpage for the County-provided templates. 

Don't forget - a real-life emergency can be substituted for your annual full-scale exercise if documented properly. Review the Incident Response Guides (IRGs) on our NHICS webpage for guidance on how to activate your Emergency Operations Plan for different hazards you may encounter. Each IRG begins with a Rapid Response checklist. Make sure you write an After Action Report and Improvement Plan for your real-life emergency for it to take the place of your full-scale exercise. Document any outside assistance or coordination with response partners to help fulfill the "community-based" requirement. Alternatively, if you are not able to participate in a community-based full-scale exercise, you are still responsible for holding a functional exercise at your facility.

For a video on the details survey procedures for this portion of the EP Rule, click here. For training videos on how to conduct a tabletop or functional/full-scale exercise at your facility, click here. 

Savings lives and saving money – Microgrid technologies can do both

In California, there is this “new normal” of extended periods of extreme heat, fierce winds, and tinder-dry wildlands. The wildfire season, once only 60 or 70 days in the 1970s, now extends for over six months of the year. The two largest and two most destructive wildfires in state history have raged in just the last two years.

Among the responses of the state’s large electrical utilities has been the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) program, during which transmission lines that run through high fire-risk areas will be intentionally shut down to prevent the possibility of sparking another catastrophic fire.

Southern California Edison stated that customers should be prepared to be without power for an extended period, when advising about the prospects for these power shut-offs. San Diego Gas & Electric revealed that power would remain out as long as the threat to their system and public safety remains. The state’s largest utility company PG&E, advised stocking up on a week’s worth of supplies.

 Are these our only options for mitigating wildfires? What if utility companies generated electricity closer to the communities that they serve? Instead of transmission lines stretching for hundreds of miles through extremely rugged mountainous terrain, is it possible to generate power closer to our long-term care facilities?

The short answer is yes. A growing movement of healthcare providers across the state are looking closer at alternative or renewable energy sources. Most people have heard of solar power as an alternate way to provide electricity to the building, but there are new approaches to generating power for multiple buildings in the form of microgrids.

Microgrids are comprised of a small network of electricity users with a local source of supply, which is attached to the larger grid. That local source of supply can be solar power, battery power, solid oxide fuel cells, etc. Microgrids, combined with energy storage, have the capacity to provide a clean uninterrupted power supply that can go off the local utility company’s grid for days, even weeks at a time.

Many folks read this and think sounds great, but what about OSHPD? The good news is that OSHPD has already overseen complex microgrid projects on acute hospital campuses with minimal time delays. Two California hospitals have already installed microgrids for their campuses with great success.

If you are concerned about how to ensure power supply at your facility during these utility shut-offs, then these systems are worth considering. The up-front cost is minimal and it can be scaled up or down to virtually any size of building. This flexibility and customization to our long-term care facilities makes the idea of building your own microgrid at your facility a viable option. If you would like to know whether California’s “new normal” of extreme, prolonged wildfire hazard could personally affect your facility or your family, check the website of your electricity provider below:

• SoCal Edison log-in for notifications
• PG&E alerts (are open to be viewed by anyone) 
• PG&E log-in for notifications
• SDG&E log-in for notifications
• LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) log-in

For more information about microgrids and their applicability to our buildings, please contact Jason Belden, CAHF’s Disaster Preparedness Program Manager.

New Training Video: Earthquake Preparedness and Recovery

Ongoing: LA County Generator Capacity Survey 

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.