Investigation of Designated Coordinators Boost Preparedness Efforts in Safety Net Hospitals

Increasingly stringent federal regulations and Joint Commission accreditation standards, as well as a growing community orientation towards emergency preparedness, have created an array of new tasks for hospitals. Most public hospital facilities assign disaster preparedness functions to existing staff, who take on this role in addition to their other responsibilities. However, to stay atop the ever-growing demand for disaster readiness activities, a new trend is emerging in public hospitals: the creation of a full-time, dedicated staff position.

In order to determine which hospitals have a designated coordinator and investigate preparedness practices, The National Public Health and Hospital Institute (NPHHI) staff surveyed 60 National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH) members in one-to-three hour long structured interviews from December 2006 to April 2007. The data from the NPHHI Emergency Preparedness Study will be used to examine whether the creation of a designated emergency preparedness coordinator is correlated with:

1.The amount a hospital spends on emergency preparedness;

2.Whether a hospital is a level one trauma center;

3.Whether a hospital participates in three or more outside emergency preparedness committees;

4.Hospital bed size;

5.History of responding to major emergency events; and

6.Geographic location of the hospital.

The data will also be used to determine whether having a designated preparedness planner leads to difference in planning practices, after controlling for geography, emergency preparedness spending, and bed size, such as:

1.Increased emergency equipment;

2.Better/more frequent disaster training; and

3.Increased access to grant funding.