By Jocelyne Issa
As an emergency management professional, preparing internal and external messages as well as dealing with the media can be part of any crisis situation. Patients, family members, staff and the media will expect information and answers that you may be asked to provide directly or through your hospital's public relations team.
In this webinar, Mitch Saruwatari, VP Quality & Compliance at LiveProcess, and Rachel Hedstrom, Sr. Account Executive with The Gentry Agency, public relations, will discuss both best practices for managing communications during a crisis and how to share information with the media.
Specifically, Mitch and Rachel will discuss:
- Requirements and guidelines for creating a crisis communications program
- Case studies featuring success and challenges faced during a crisis
- Practical tools for collecting and disseminating critical information
- Preparing for media interviews
You can register for the Healthcare Crisis Communications webinar through our website. If you were unable to attend the live event on Wednesday January 18th at 2:00pm ET, the recording will be available on our site at a later date. If you register, we’ll also send you a reminder when the recording is available.
The following is another blog article from our PR Manager, Rachel Hedstrom. Rachel wrote an article on Crisis Communications last month and this article is a great follow-on piece. Our thanks to Rachel for contributing.
Free Healthcare Crisis Communication webinar! Rachel will join Mitch Saruwatari on Wednesday, January 18 at 2:00pm ET to share tips and guidelines for creating a crisis communication program and effectively sharing information. Register here.
Shape Up Your Crisis Communications Skills
Rachel Hedstrom, APR
The Gentry Agency
At the beginning of any new year, we often find ourselves wanting to shape up a few muscles. Like any well-trained athlete, emergency managers must constantly keep several things in shape. One muscle to not let get lax (and sack out on the couch eating a bag of Cheetos) is your ability to communicate.
Here are a few training tips to keep your program in peak performance year-round:
WARM UP Getting your ducks in a row before a crisis hits is crucial on so many fronts. How is your communications program? How often do you plan to communicate with employees and with what kind of messaging? What kind of ongoing relationship does your facility have with the media? How informed and involved is your top leadership? Do you work well with your PIO and/or do you know how to serve effectively as one? Give yourself a grade for each of these areas and identify specific ways in which your program can improve. Prioritize three areas for communications improvement this year and tackle those first.
STRETCH Think outside the proverbial box. For each of these identified areas for improvement, is there a new way to tackle the issue? Research best practices from colleagues in the industry. Look at new technology tools that are making it easier to communicate. Make sure you can operate well from your smart phone if you're away. Identify a training class - online or in-person - that will help improve some aspect of your program, or your skills. LiveProcess offers a few that bring processes like code-calling, opening a command center, and notifying key personnel a simple click of the button, for example.
CARDIO Put those skills to work. Consider conducting drills -- table-top or otherwise -- where communications is the sole focus. Try to break your own system. Throw every variable in the book at yourself and your team. Drill for your key players being off-site and unavailable. Try conducting it from home to simulate a disaster at 3 a.m. Make sure communications is the focus and drill to breakage.
COOL DOWN Be willing to take deep, critical look at your performance and your team’s and think through how it can be conducted, recorded and eventually made to be more efficient. Measure your success. How long did it take the team to respond? How many media inquiries were you able to get to? How many codes were called and how many were properly responded to? How often were employees communicated with? Were key stakeholders like senior administration, key publics, board and donors considered? Were there points of complete communication break-down? Doing a hot wash after a drill or an event – and then acting on the results to make better plans and processes – are the only way we can really improve.
Fit communication skills pack plenty of muscle for any disaster, whether it’s of the everyday or oh-my-goodness variety. Flex them often.
By Diane Garey
I recently finished reading “The Healing of America” by T.R. Reid. For me, it was a great primer on the different health care systems around the globe, describing everything from publicly 
funded healthcare systems like the National Health Service (NHS) in Great Britain, where everyone has access to healthcare via hospitals and healthcare facilities that are run by the government and via healthcare workers who are public employees, to multi-payer systems like those in Germany, where everyone in the country has access to healthcare through private or public insurance, to “user pay” systems in developing countries where for the most part, only those individuals who can pay on their own can see a doctor or get a prescription when they are sick.
A key difference from the systems in the other countries that Mr. Reid described (France, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, Taiwan, and Japan) and the US is the complexity of the US healthcare delivery system. In the USA:
- Military personnel and veterans, Native Americans are some others receive healthcare at government-run facilities, just like people in the UK.
- For Americans over 65-years old, they are covered through publicly-funded Medicare insurance and can see private doctors, similar to people in Canada.
- For working Americans, our insurance is often covered (fully or partially) by our employers, the same as many people in Germany and in France.
- For millions of non-working and very poor Americans, they have limited or no access to basic healthcare, just like the majority of people in many developing nations.
Reuters reported last month that in the US, we pay almost $7900 per person for healthcare each year – more than any other industrialized country. And much more in fact … the cost of healthcare in the US is 62% higher than that in Switzerland, which has a similar per capita income and also relies substantially on private health insurance. I’m not naïve enough to blame the high cost of healthcare on one factor, but I do wonder if some of the cost is because of the complexity of managing multiple systems.
An article today about Vermont Gov. Pete Shumlin signing the country’s first single-payer law caught my eye. This law sets Vermont on a course to be first with a publicly financed healthcare system. In Canada, Medicare started in a similar way … with one Province (State) adopting universal healthcare and from there, the concept spread across the rest of the country. Whether that happens in the US or even if it’s the right model for the US, time will tell. Even in the Vermont case, the law won't create a single-payer system immediately. Instead, it authorizes a board to first aim to rein in the rising healthcare costs. That task, as well as working with private, for-profit health plans and large employers in the state could take as long as five years.
I know healthcare reform is a highly divisive and political topic in the US. Whatever form healthcare reform comes in, I hope 2012 is the year that the system starts to change, for the better, for patients and the dedicated healthcare professionals who care for them.
By Nathaniel Weiss
My best wishes to all of you for happiness and good health this holiday season and throughout
the coming New Year.
2011 was another incredible year for emergency management professionals. We witnessed powerful events around the world, from the earthquake in Japan, tornados in Alabama, Georgia and Missouri, and powerful storms including Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Irene that affected our own neighborhoods here in New Jersey. For those of you who are emergency management professionals, I'd like to thank you for your dedication to emergency preparedness and response.
We also saw significant changes in healthcare and specifically healthcare IT. As I wrote back in January, these are great times to be a healthcare IT entrepreneur. With changing Medicare regulation, the need to reduce healthcare costs, and an empowered patient population, the need and demand for innovative technology has never been stronger. I’m excited about leading LiveProcess into 2012 and look forward to telling you about new applications we’ll deliver in 2012 in future blog articles.
I wish you a peaceful, happy and safe holiday season.
By Jocelyne Issa
Thinking of the holiday season gives most people a warm feeling. Holiday traditions like gathering with family and friends, cooking and eating delicious treats, and sharing good cheer are what it’s all about.
Change and new traditions can be fun as well. One of my favorite examples is the non-holiday Festivus, introduced into pop-culture by Seinfeld in 1997. Even though the “airing of grievances” sounds appealing, I don’t think it’s for me, so I won’t be adding it as a tradition in my house. But traditions in my house have definitely evolved over the years. When I was growing up we were not allowed to open any gifts on Christmas Eve. But, as we became older, we changed our tradition and now open a single gift on Christmas Eve and save the rest for Christmas day. This makes Christmas Eve even more festive and helped me better realize that not all change is bad!
Old tradition is good – especially when it means it’s been proven. I’ve learned a lot in the AHA webinar on Active Shooters that LiveProcess sponsored in October. While it was new information to me, I knew Mark Potter, with over 30 years of experience, was sharing trusted tactics for preventing or managing volatile situations. When something is proven to be effective, keep doing it. Another good ‘tested and proven’ example I learned this year was hearing from folks at Anne Arundel Medical Center and how they responded to Hurricane Irene. Because of their extensive training, they knew just how to set up their command center to allow for optimal coverage during the event.
New traditions can be good too. Last week Mitch wrote about making social media part of emergency management and it made me wonder how many emergency managers will incorporate social media into their program in 2012 if they’re not already doing it. Another new tradition that can enhance an emergency management program would be to consider adding new technologies. They can streamline and simplify much of what could otherwise be daunting and time-consuming.
Whatever tradition you choose to follow and holiday you plan to celebrate, I hope it’s a safe and happy one!
By Mitch Saruwatari
I love the holidays. Last night, my two daughters were singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” while decorating their school holiday projects. However, I noticed their lyrics were far from the liturgical church traditional intentions. They were more closely aligned with their hopefully fulfilled Santa’s List. As emergency managers, we may have a similar “list” of gifts that we’d like to see delivered this year or sometime in 2012. In the spirit of the holiday season, I’ve listed the twelve gifts I’d like to see sometime soon.
- Organizational leadership support
- A bigger budget
- Greater training enthusiasm
- Earlier hazard recognition
- Faster response times
- Friendly accreditation and regulatory visitors
- Disaster-proof communication devices and networks
- Staff and patient safety at all times and no more shooter, abduction, threatening-person incidents
- EOP’s, plans, policies automatically written and updated
- Self-rotating disaster supply cache
- Improved community collaboration
- My own emergency management vehicle (four-wheel drive preferred)
I also wish there were 24- or 48- or more days of Christmas because this list could go on and on! If you had a 2012 wish list, what would you include?
Thank you for your thoughts and comments! Have a wonderful holiday season!
By Diane Garey
If you are a Joint Commission accredited hospital, then you probably update your HVA at least once a year. I’d also suspect that January is a good time since it can be included with other “New Year” activities. Even if your hospital is not accredited, it’s still a good practice to do it every year. Given that, I’d like to pass along three great HVA ideas that I’ve heard from others for you to consider as you do your annual update:
- Consider new hazards. I realize most of
your top hazards are the same from year-to-year. If you live in California for example, earthquakes will always be higher on your list than hurricanes. The top hazards might change though – 10 years ago, would you have considered a software virus a likely threat to activate your EOP or cause your ED to go on diversion? Or given the amount of media coverage lately, could active shooter be new to your list?
- Involve the Emergency Management or Safety Committee in the HVA. I had a great conversation recently with a safety director who described using LiveProcess each year to review and update the hospital HVA with the Safety Committee. In a group meeting, they go through each natural, infrastructure, security and mass casualty hazard and agree on the likelihood of that hazard affecting their hospital, the potential impact, and their current preparedness level. Going through the exercise collaboratively helps everyone on the Committee understand the mix of potential hazards that could affect their hospital. This can help gain buy-in and support for mitigation activities, training and exercises.
- Leverage your Hazard Vulnerability Analysis throughout your emergency management program. Instead of thinking of your annual HVA update as an independent task, consider it to be a foundation for other elements of your program … the plans to write, exercises to run, training/tests for staff, etc. Once you know the hazards, it makes it a lot easier to target your emergency management activities.
What other ideas do you have for updating and leveraging your HVAs? Please make a note in the comments section below.
Resources
As you plan your HVA update, and work on all of your other New Year activities, here are a couple of materials that might help:
By Mitch Saruwatari
I just watched a powerful video on YouTube about some of the remarkable facts regarding Social Media in 2011.
Here are a few highlights:
- Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
- 1 in 5 couples meet online
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest
- A new member joins LinkedIn every second
- YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
- If Wikipedia were made into a book, it would be 2.25 million pages long and take over 123 years to read
- 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations
These are amazing and really prove we will need to consider ways to implement social media more than ever for developing emergency management tools that reach a broader population base and provide more timely, informative and useful information. To Quote Erik Qualman, “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media; the question is how well we do it.”
Earlier this year, Craig Fugate met with Craig Newmark (founder of Craig’s List) and discussed via YouTube why we need to consider integrating social media into emergency management plans. He also met with the editors from Wired Magazine, Twitter, Apple and Facebook. While discussions will continue, we really need to begin implementing social media today and he outlined a few ways on how we can easily get started.
- Communication during or after an emergency. Staying in touch with loved ones or those you trust for collecting and sharing information is critical also one of the challenges with social media is it can be difficult to evaluate what is credible. Having valued sources in advance can extend existing personal networks.
- Receive updates on your phone. There are a number of ways to get text and email messages automatically (HAN, LinkedIn Discussion groups and even through FEMA on Facebook). Take advantage of them. It can help you respond faster and more effectively.
- Leverage Twitter (without signing up). Extend the networks in #1 and #2 above without having to create a Twitter account.
It is interesting to consider how we use social media today. Even in writing this blog (another example of social media), I did some research using YouTube, Google, LinkedIn, Wiki and others. It’s so commonly used that I accessed them without even thinking. If only we can find a way to better leverage social media to make emergency management as automatic.
By Diane Garey
Yesterday, I attended an Emergency Management All Hazards/All Stakeholders Summit in Houston hosted by Emergency Management Magazine. It seemed to me there was a big crowd (I’d guess there more than 300 attendees) from a variety of agencies – police, fire, EMS, coast guard, public health, city and county officials, and others that I missed.
I really enjoyed the keynote by Garry Briese. Garry spoke about how the success of an organization is more dependent on good “followership” than great leadership, because while 
it’s the leaders who provide the vision; it’s the followers who provide the actions to get things done. Garry gave some familiar examples … while Captain Kirk set the direction on Star Trek, it was Mr. Spock who figured out the plan. And when the Lone Ranger determined who to save, it was Tonto who did the heavy lifting when it came to tracking the bad guys.
As Emergency Managers, I’m sure you are often in the leader role and the person that that people look to for direction during a disaster. But, I also expect that there are times when you’re asked to follow … when working with other agencies or when working through your own hospital’s chain of command. Garry had a number of takeaways for us to be good followers. The one that I think is most important for Emergency Management is “give the boss the benefit of your knowledge”. As an EM, you have a wealth of knowledge that exists nowhere else in your organization and to make your leader and your organization a success, you need to tell people what they need to hear. Sometimes what leaders need to hear isn’t what they want to hear, especially when you're talking about disasters, funding, casualties, and other problems. As a good follower, you’re obligated to let them know.
It was a great topic for a keynote for emergency managers. I’m glad I had the chance to attend the Summit and hope others enjoyed it as well. If there's one next year in a city near you, I'd highly recommend it.
As I mentioned in my last blog article on Risk Communication and Healthcare Emergency Management, our PR Manager, Rachel Hedstrom of The Gentry Agency agreed to do a follow-up piece specifically on dealing with the media. Below is her article. Thanks to Rachel for providing!
-Mitch
Crisis Communications for Hospitals
By Rachel Hedstrom, APR
The Gentry Agency
It’s often been said that every day in a hospital is an emergency – that it’s just the size of the emergency on the given day that makes the difference.
Having spent years handling crisis communications for hospitals and other healthcare institutions, I would have to whole-heartedly agree.
Hurricanes? Yes. Tornadoes? Sure. Patients threatening to call the media? Yup. Lawsuits? Check. Rampant infectious disease? Of course. Threatening employee situations? Uh huh. Plane crashes – yes, unfortunately, that too.
My background in PR prepared me for handling the media, but it was my hospital experience that taught me how emotionally charged situations are when dealing with people’s lives. It’s crisis communications on steroids, each and every day.
Every incident commander or emergency management professional with whom I’ve ever had the honor to work has taught me an immense amount about incident command and hospital operations. In turn, I’ve put my media relations skills to work for them and, together, we’ve handled crises with well-planned responses and out-of-the-box thinking. I’m dedicating this blog entry to all those emergency managers out there who come to work every day to make a difference. You are heroes to the rest of us.
To add to your preparedness toolkit (and super-hero status), here are a few “inside” media tips to keep in mind for your next emergency:
- Define what you do and don’t want people to know – and communicate it. Have frank conversations with your entire team, including administration, and communicate very openly with your PIO and all other members of your incident command team. Use technology like LiveProcess to keep everyone on the same page. One small slip-up on a quick call to a well-intentioned vendor or third-party could be the headline on the nightly news. Control information by heading off potential leaks before they have a chance to happen.
- That being said, think in terms of access rather than limitation. Just like you, reporters are professionals just trying to do a good job. If you have a positive rapport with them year-round, you are already well-positioned in their eyes come crisis time. Foster those relationships. Even in the midst of a situation, can you assign a trustworthy someone to help get the media an interview or “inside shot”? This is the time that the public will be paying rapt attention to your organization. Depending on the situation, if there is any way to give them something without compromising patients or employees – a great shot, an interview, a patient family, access to a certain part of the building, still photos from inside your hospital, etc. – you will go great lengths in both public sentiment and media relationships. These can both come in very handy.
- Think outside the press conference. Yes, sometimes a press
conference is the easiest way to get information across to the public in an efficient way. But do your best to work with your PIO to think outside the box. Does it have to be held with everyone sitting at a table? Can you give each outlet one-on-one interviews with a certain physician or patient family? Is there some interesting visual that goes along with your message that you are trying to convey that you can give them? Again, while this moment is a difficult one – it’s also your hospital’s time to shine, and your opportunity to most effectively convey your message. Bring your perspective up to that level (I know, it’s difficult in the midst of any crisis) and you will reap the rewards.
- Banish the phrase “No comment” from your vocabulary. Here’s the real, hard truth: in today’s overly digitized and networked world, there is no such thing as staying silent anymore. People will Facebook, blog, text, and video comments for you, from inside or outside your organization. Those who try to just squelch all communications are fool-hardy. See the Bronx Zoo Twitter fiasco for the story of an organization that refused to communicate in a time of hardship – and a clever, funny third-party jumped in to (erroneously) do it for them, resulting in thousands of followers to a fake Twitter feed about a cobra’s vacation in New York. In this day and age, not communicating is not an option.
Perspective is everything in media relations. Whether you like it or not, your hospital’s reputation is wedded to them – for better or worse. Stay on the “better” side as much as you can.
If you are a current LiveProcess subscriber, look for an email invitation to attend a Crisis Communications web seminar this month (contact support@liveprocess.com for details if you missed the email). Mitch and I will go through a number of communication tips to get you through any crisis. Please join us.