Hospital Disaster Preparedness

Hospital Drill & Exercise Requirements

Hospitals are required to conduct drills and exercises for accreditation and/or grant requirement(s).

 Examples of these requirements include:

  • The HPP grant may require hospital participation in the annual Statewide Medical Health Exercise.
  • The National Incident Management System Compliance for Healthcare Objective 7 states that NIMS concepts and principles are promoted into all organization-related training and exercises.
  • The Joint Commission in EM03.01.03 requires two emergency response exercises (at least one to include an escalating event where the local community is unable to support the event), and at least one to include participation in a community-wide exercise.
  • The California Code of Regulations 70741 (d) requires disaster plans to be rehearsed at least twice per year. 70743 © requires fire and internal disaster drills shall be held at least quarterly for each shift of hospital personnel and under varied conditions.
  • NFPA 5.14 requires the entity shall evaluate program plans, procedures, and capabilities through periodic reviews, testing, and exercises.

Operations-based Exercises validate plans, policies, agreements and procedures, clarify roles and responsibilities, and identify resource gaps in an operational environment.Operations-based exercises include the following:

Full-Scale Exercises (FSE): A full-scale exercise is a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline exercise involving functional (e.g., joint field office, emergency operation centers, etc.) and “boots on the ground” response (e.g., firefighters decontaminating mock victims).

Drill: A drill is a coordinated, supervised activity usually employed to test a single, specific operation or function within a single entity (e.g., a fire department conducts a decontamination drill).

Functional Exercise (FE): A functional exercise examines and/or validates the coordination, command, and control between various multi-agency coordination centers (e.g., emergency operation center, joint field office, etc.). A functional exercise does not involve any “boots on the ground” (i.e., first responders or emergency officials responding to an incident in real time).