Health Information Compliance Alert

Quiz your team on their emergency situation savvy

Are you having a hard time helping your staff get their heads around your emergency procedures? With a little guided practice, your team will be sniffing out trouble in no time.

Plan of action: Make a list of the emergency situations your organization might face, suggests Stephen Priest, a consultant with Professor Steve & Associates in Bedford, VT. Decide how your facility will handle each scenario and then see how your employees respond, he instructs.

Remember: In an emergency, you must continue to operate. And if operation is impossible and you've got to find a way to get recover, Priest clarifies. Here are some sample scenarios to you get started:

INSTRUCTIONS: For each scenario below, note if the situation is an emergency and why. On a separate sheet of paper, write how you'd respond. 

1. A patient in your waiting room goes into cardiac arrest. The only doctor in the department is a
visiting physician who does not have authorization to see the patient's medical record.

2. A doctor shows up for work Saturday morning, but cannot find her badge. Without that token,
she cannot access any e-PHI.

3. You are entering patient information in your electronic records management system when a
three-block power outage occurs. Your entire facility is without power.

4. A patient presents for a hernia repair. You see that he is scheduled for today, but you cannot
find his medical record.

5. An e-mail virus hits your network. Your computers are down indefinitely and all data from the
last 24 hours is destroyed.

6. A glitch in your system wipes out a month's worth of the financial information your facility needs to send out bills.

7. A pipe bursts in your medical records room.

8. A physician who often refers his patients to your facility calls for backup support after a hurricane destroys his office.

9. A patient presents for surgery on her brain tumor, but can remember neither the time of her appointment nor her doctor's name.

10. You get a call in the middle of the night that a fire just destroyed an entire lab, including its equipment and supplies.