Dealing with Emergency Patient Surge in Healthcare Facilities

A patient surge in any healthcare facility is quite common. Since this happens usually when an emergency occurs, the hospital authorities are mostly unaware of such an event. During these events, the facility managers of even the most efficiently managed hospitals stay on their toes while ensuring safety and security. How you manage and respond to the situation depends on how you planned things right from the facility management design stage of the new building. How you plan the security sensitive parts will at a later stage help you in dealing with such emergencies efficiently.

The Onset of Facility Emergency Planning

To start with the planning, you must first consider all the security sensitive areas that will be exposed to patients during an emergency. These would be the emergency departments, labour units, PHIs, nuclear and radiological source material storage areas, mechanical rooms and communication centres and pharmacies to name a few. It is during these patient surge that criminals make the most of the opportunities to comfortably enter the hospital premises and indulge in anti-social activities.

Planning

It therefore goes without saying that planning the security sensitive areas in any healthcare facility is extremely important. Let us take a look at the points below:

• Firstly, you must build an integrated facilities management plan where all the security safeguards are applied consistently
• Adhere to the jurisdiction of the state while aligning your security plans with the life security plans of the building.
• Get an assessment of the probable security risks done by a security professional
• Know the security representative of the building who would be responsible for reviewing and approving the design plans

Last but not the least, always remember that all your security plans should abide by the four Ds – deter, detect, delay and deny.

It is very important to remember that public health facilities are important infrastructures of the community. As a result, these facilities must be equipped with the proper amenities, resources and expertise. While other industries do not get as impacted as healthcare facilities do in times of emergencies, having a healthcare facilities management plan is crucial to serving the public during these emergencies. Every safety and security plan must consider that at any moment there might be an emergency resulting in patient surge. And while preparing and responding to these situations that you need to ensure the safety and security of not just the patients and staffs but of the security sensitive areas as well.

While building out a plan to deal with an emergency patient surge, ensure that all your plans and designs are stored securely in Cloud and that they are readily available from any mobile device.