In preparation for unrest after the grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, many area hospitals set up incident commands to oversee operations, relay information to employees and handle media requests, according to an article on the Modern Healthcare website. 

Damon Harbison, Cardinal Glennon Hospital's COO and incident commander, said preparation for riots in Ferguson had been “on our radar for months.”

Harbison, who worked the night shifts along with other staff members to monitor the event, said that SSM Health Care had developed multidisciplinary committees at both the network and hospital levels to run through scenarios and prepare staff for the riots. 

Though the staff in the hospital's ER understand how to deal with intake surges, the key role Harbison had was to reassure employees, patients and families that the hospital was safe and that operating as usual, the article said.

“All the planning that we did paid off. We had the right communication tools, the right team members in our incident command center and we were organized,” he said. 

Read the article.