Emergency Preparedness

About Emergency Preparedness

It’s time to change the way California thinks about disaster response. The COVID-19 pandemic showed that hospitals can quickly mobilize to provide flexible approaches to patient care during a disaster. The state must draw upon these lessons to prepare differently so the next crisis will be less severe. Given California’s size and complexity, the health care disaster response system of the future must be nimble enough to respond to any catastrophe. View more information on hospital disaster preparedness.

Pediatric Patient Surge Preparedness

2024 Disaster Conference

This presentation outlines approaches for pediatric patient surges: what to prepare for, important roles and responsibilities, and share resources and best practices. The session reviews pediatric surge planing and reviews steps to developing an plan for mass casualty incidents.

Hospital Evacuations: What Happens When the Lights Go Out?

2024 Disaster Conference

This presentation focuses on the dynamics of emergency preparedness under adverse conditions, where collaboration and communication faced unique challenges within an unfamiliar setting. Gain insights into the complexities of managing power outages while ensuring the safety and well-being of all those involved and obtain lessons learned for enhancing emergency preparedness response strategies.

Helping the Helpers During Times of Crisis

2024 Disaster Conference

This presentation shares experiences leading successful teams and averting crisis, and explores techniques that can be used to help even the most novice leader rise to meet the challenge in front of them and bring their teams along with them.

Resources for Quick Earthquake Response Decisions

2024 Disaster Conference

This presentation demonstrates efforts to mitigate hospital earthquake losses. It provides earthquake tools to assist emergency managers in making quick response decisions, including earthquake early warning to ease earthquake damage and injuries at health care facilities.

Design, Execute, and Evaluate a Hospital Disaster Drill

2024 Disaster Conference

This presentation prepares newer disaster planners with exercise drill skills. It provides exercise regulatory information from The Joint Commission and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, design strategies, and planning considerations for various types of disaster exercises. Newer exercise design planners will become more disaster resilient while understanding how to effectively evaluate and document an EP exercise to meet their requirements. This session provides best practice information and the tools for post-disaster exercise meetings, forms, documentation, and after-action/process improvement.

Test Your Hospital’s Cyber Readiness

2024 Disaster Conference

This session covers how to test your facility’s readiness for a cyber-attack. It discusses how one organization conducted a functional exercise to test response capabilities during a full network outage in an outpatient setting. 

Building Business Continuity for Health Care’s Future

2024 Disaster Conference

Presented by Mass General Brigham’s Department of Emergency Preparedness and Continuity (DEPC), this session outlines development of a health care-centric sustainable and effective continuity program. DEPC developed tools and adapted traditional practices to focus on capability building and maintaining mission essential functions.

Planning for Mass Gathering Events

2016 Disaster Conference

This presentation outlines the similarities and differences in planned vs. emergency/disaster events and analyzes the different consideration for each in the context of disaster planning.