The Joint Commission’s Element of Performance (EP) 3 within standard EM.02.01.01 reads, “The Emergency Operations Plan" identifies the hospital’s capabilities and establishes response procedures for when the hospital cannot be supported by the local community in the hospital’s efforts to provide communications, resources and assets, security and safety, staff, utilities, or patient care for at least 96 hours.

The expectation is that hospitals break down each of the six emergency management (EM) resource areas to identify immediate loss of capability consequences and consequences that arise as resources on hand are depleted, according to an article on the FacilityCare website.

Single points of failure can be difficult to identify because hospitals have many redundancies built into the infrastructure of the building and serving the building from municipal sources. 

The key is to assume the community infrastructure is destroyed. When an organization assumes it is a true island, the single points of failure become more obvious, the article said. 

Read the article.