Emergency Response Plan for COVID-19 Pandemic
Instructions
COVID-19 of 2020 brought unprecedented disruption to healthcare operations and required healthcare leaders to revise, revamp, and reconsider how healthcare is delivered to the patient while sustaining operations and revenue generation.
In this scenario, you are the administrator of an ambulatory facility and report to the five primary care physicians who are the shareholders/owners. In addition to these five providers, other staff members include 1 mid-level provider (nurse practitioner), and 15 staff members including 2 RN supervisors, 3 LVNs who support clinical operations, 2 medical assistants in the lab and radiology, 3 HIM staff, 1 tech support, and 4 receptionists.
On the health information side, there is an EMR (an electronic medical record) with communications capabilities between providers and staff, business functions including practice management, lab, and radiology reporting, population health, human resources, and executive management reporting functions.
You have been tasked to develop an emergency response plan for the organization by the 5 shareholders/owners. Their primary concern is business continuity during unexpected operations; specifically, operations to protect staff and patients, the need to increase telecommunications, maintain expenses and revenue, maintain clinical care and patient engagement as much as practical, and safeguard the EMR and its content.
The following should be included in your proposal and used as primary APA headings/titles in your plan:
1. Identify, by position, and explain who is the organization's primary and secondary emergency response leaders while developing an emergency response team from the organizational makeup described. Please justify your selection of positions with an overview of the responsibilities.
2. Using the THIRA Process outlined in the Wagner textbook and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, elaborate on each step related to the COVID-19 pandemic response of this healthcare organization.
3. Using the operational and business responsibilities under each this week's lessons (4.1 and 4.2), explain how each one would be maintained in this emergency response plan.
4.Explain external guidance that would be used to establish an emergency plan.
Grading Criteria
Student writing should be at the academic level, unbiased language in the third person, and proper healthcare and legal vernacular.
Assigned papers will require APA formatting (most current edition), including the title and reference pages. If you are unsure how to format using APA style, please see the Writing Center or Syracuse Library Citation Guide: APA .
Excluding the APA title and reference pages, the papers should be between 1,000 - 1500 words in the body. The word count requires the substance to be concise, robust, logical, and demonstrate complete knowledge of the weekly content. Although not in proper APA formatting, please include the word count for the paper's body at the very bottom of the title page. For assistance with determining the word count, please see the following Microsoft Word resource.
The body of the paper should include first level APA headings for all content or topics when required. Having the required content as first-level headings will support students in meeting the content requirements and the paper's focus on the required subjects. Students are welcome to add subheadings at the second or third levels, but the first level is required. The APA Style Headings can assist with formatting headings.
All sources used within the paper's body (directly and paraphrased) must be cited in the body of the paper and on the required reference page per APA requirements and should not exceed 20%. Content from other sources that exceed 20% could indicate a lack of originality or possibly plagiarism and will be addressed following the Academic Integrity Policy noted below.
Third-party plagiarism software, such as Turnitin, may be used to assess the originality of a student's work in any assignment, papers, and quizzes, or exams to rule out plagiarism. NOTE: a link is provided in the course for students to submit a DRAFT Turnitin submission for a pre-review before submitting for grading to meet course and SU requirements.
The quality of the content will be assessed using the attached rubric. All criteria in the category must be met to earn the full points. See attached rubric.
Emergency Response Plan for COVID-19 Pandemic
Your Name
Subject and Section
Professor’s Name
April 9, 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 brought unprecedented disruption to healthcare operations, requiring healthcare leaders to revise, revamp, and reconsider how healthcare is delivered to the patient while sustaining operations and revenue generation. Accordingly, leaders of healthcare organizations were pressed to strike a balance between profitability and the provision of care by maximizing the cost-efficient use of resources and mitigating risks. Accordingly, this emergency response plan aims to ensure the continuity of operations to protect staff and patients, maintain expenses and revenue, maintain clinical care and patient engagement, and safeguard the EMR and its content for this healthcare organization.
Primary and Secondary Emergency Response Leaders
Creating an effective response to the COVID-19 Pandemic requires a clear and effective structural hierarchy within the organization. During a pandemic, the healthcare organization has identified its primary and secondary emergency response leaders as the administrator and the medical director, respectively. The administrator is responsible for overseeing the organization's overall management, while the medical director is in charge of directing and coordinating medical services to ensure the quality of care.
In addition to these two primary leaders, the emergency response team comprises several positions, including RN supervisors who manage clinical operations, ensure adequate supplies, and oversee the nursing staff. Additionally, a mid-level provider assists physicians and provides patient care, while medical assistants support clinical operations and perform lab and radiology procedures (Reddy et al., 2022). The HIM staff is responsible for managing patient records and ensuring data security and tech support ensure that the EMR and other technology are operational and secure. Receptionists manage patient flow and ensure that infection control measures are in place. This team of leaders and staff works collaboratively to ensure that the organization can effectively respond to emergencies and provide optimal patient care.
THIRA Process
After establishing the response team's clear structure and relaying the stakeholders' roles, the next step is creating a method to reduce risks. Accordingly, the THIRA (Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment) process systematically identifies and assesses potential hazards and their risks (Wickham et al., 2019). For example, in one study done by Tran et al. (2022), the authors noted that some of the toolkits which must be addressed in a THIRA assessment of the COVID-19 Pandemic, include "disease detection and surveillance, such as laboratory or capacity of the community for disease control."
In line with this, the steps in the THIRA process for the COVID-19 pandemic response of this healthcare organization are as follows. The first step is to identify the hazard, which is the highly infectious COVID-19 virus posing significant risks to staff and patients. The consequences of the pandemic include the potential loss of life, widespread illness, and disruption of operations and revenue generation. The organization should then identify the capabilities needed to respond, including adequate supplies of PPE, equipment, testing, sufficient staff, and effective communication systems (Rabuñal et al., 2020). The organization should also identify gaps in its current capabilities, such as limited supplies of PPE and testing, potential staffing shortages due to illness or quarantine, and the need for an effective communication system. The plan should then be developed to address these gaps, including acquiring additional PPE and testing, cross-training staff, and implementing a communication system that supports remote work and telemedicine (Lateef et al., 2021). Implementation of the plan should be prompt, with regular monitoring and feedback from staff and patients. Finally, the plan should be evaluated regularly to ensure its effectiveness and updated as necessary.
Operational and Business Responsibilities
As the administrator of an ambulatory facility during the COVID-19 pandemic, the emergency response plan must ensure that operational and business responsibilities are maintained. The administrator's primary responsibility is overseeing the overall management and coordination of the emergency response plan. This includes ensuring that the plan is communicated to all staff members and that each member understands their role. Effective health communication is essential within the whole healthcare organization since it allows for the better and more efficient implementation of change within the healthcare setting (Olson et al., 2020). Accordingly, the administrator must also ensure that adequate supplies and equipment are available to staff and that the facility can continue to operate during the pandemic. The administrator must work with the medical director to coordinate medical services effectively.
The medical director is responsible for directing and coordinating medical services and ensuring the quality of care. In the emergency response plan, the medical director will work with the administrator to ensure that all staff members are trained to provide the highest quality care possible during the pandemic. The medical director must also ensure that adequate personal prot...