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RISKAlert November, 2014 Updated Incident Planning for Healthcare Facilities

Posted on December 16, 2014 6:34 pm by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

Incorporating Active Shooter Incident Planning into Health Care Facility Emergency Operations Plans

National preparedness efforts, including planning, are based on U.S. Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) 8: Preparedness, which was signed by the President in March 2011.  This updated  directive represents an “evolution” in understanding of national preparedness based on lessons learned from rom natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, terrorist acts like the Boston Bombing and active shooter and other violent incidents.

Preparedness is centered in five areas: Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery. These concepts are applied to Health Care Facility (HCFs) Planning for active shooters and other violent incidents.

Emergency Operations Plans for Health Care Facilities (EOPs) should be living documents that are routinely reviewed and consider all types of hazards, including the possibility of an active shooter or terrorist incident. As law enforcement continues to draw lessons learned from actual emergencies, HCFs should incorporate those lessons learned into existing emergency plans or in newly created EOPs.

It advises a whole community approach that includes staff, patients, and visitors as well as individuals with access and functional needs. Examples of these populations include children, older adults, pregnant women, individuals with disabilities, etc.

The key concepts include not only familiar concepts like “Run-Hide-Fight” but also concepts on addressing a wider range of risks (threats), how to do drills, improvement of situational awareness activities, expanding the definitions of risks, how to do Psychological First Aid (PFA), and how to integrate these with HIPAA guidelines and Rules and the importance and role of Security in Emergency Operations Planning (EOPs).

Lesson  Learned :    Don’t Wait to Respond!

A 2005 investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology into the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, found that people close to the floors impacted waited longer to start evacuating than those on unaffected floors.   Similarly, during the Virginia Tech shooting, individuals on campus responded to the shooting with varying degrees of urgency. (ref:  Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications.)

            Frequent Security Situational Awareness Training, and Active Shooter –
Disaster Drills can prevent this “frozen” phenomena and save lives in
a violent incident , a terrorist attack, or a disaster scenario.


RISKAlerts are publications of Risk & Security LLC



How to Build a New, Risk-Based Police Model that Really Works

Posted on December 5, 2014 11:19 am by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

Law Enforcement Can Transform Itself by Turning to a Risk-Based Policing Model

Watching the protests across the country over the last few months,  the two groups, the Citizens and the Police, as polarized as the US Congress, I think, we can do BETTER than this. We can make police officers RISK OFFICERS for their communities.

The current stereotypes of police with military-style weapons and protective gear, is counterproductive, just like the stereotype of poor, uneducated, violent, drug-using citizens is also counterproductive to progress.

Most departments are still working with the historical model of law enforcement that is still followed religiously around the country, even though it is over 100 years old.  This model is totally ” Enforcement ” oriented.  Something bad happens, police go find the perpetrator and arrest them.

At the same time, cities and counties are having a hard time enlisting new officers, in fact, in Police Chief Magazine in the December 2014 issue, they point out that 80% of departments are having major recruitment problems. Young men don’t want to become ‘traditional’ police officers. The role needs to change.

The model of law enforcement is at a point when it needs to change, and to evolve into a risk-based, crime-preventive model, instead of a total arrest and subdue model. 

The benefit would be a different kind of police force, one that is more educated, more  tech-savvy, and problem solving, and focused heavy on prevention.

Instead of educating police officers on some goofy model of how to talk to people, they need to get educated on threat-risk techniques.  They need to be able to go to a neighborhood, pro-actively and come up with a risk assessment for that neighborhood,  followed by a plan to improve the lives of the people who live
there.  Just like we use interviews and surveys for our high-tech risk assessments, these officers could do the same thing.

Police officers today perform only a narrow range of activities.  This great group of ethical professional officers COULD DO SO MUCH MORE.  

 

In the next article, we’ll include suggestions on how to make the change.




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