The Joint Commission requires hospitals to monitor six critical areas during disaster drills. Does the AHRQ revised tool address these six critical areas?
Cindy Notobartolo: AHRQ tools do have it embedded in them, things like security, things like Incident Command, but the structure is not, actually, organized into those six categories. This is a suggestion for AHRQ in the future. Mollie Jenckes: The AHRQ tools address five of the six areas: internal and external communications; adequacy and appropriateness of supplies; safety and security enabling hospital operations to continue; staff roles and responsibilities within HICS; and maintaining clinical activities. These areas are addressed through evaluating the capability to deliver in each of these. Items to accomplish this are included in each of the zone modules, i.e., decontamination, triage, treatment, etc. Utilities to enable self sufficiency for 96 hours is not addressed explicitly, although some areas evaluated are related to this area. To learn more about The Joint Commission’s six critical areas please refer to: http://www.disasterpreparation.net/resources.html (last accessed 3/
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