How should a hospitals Emergency Management Program (EMP) relate to plans made by other entities in their community?
Effective emergency management requires planning, cooperation, training and exercising with the entire community. Collaboration should start at the planning phase and continue throughout the entire Emergency Management Program development and implementation. Other community partners should be aware of the hospital’s EMP and be involved in integrating the various plans for other agencies. Community planning cannot be accomplished by hospitals developing Emergency Management Programs in a vacuum, there are too many shared and common resources used by multiple hospitals and multiple community agencies to have effective plans without joint planning. Disaster Councils and County Emergency Medical Care Committees are two common forums where the broad community emergency operations planning often occur. Some communities use the local Public Health Departments’ Hospital Preparedness Programs (HPP) stakeholders meeting to perform these community-wide planning efforts. More information on this t
