GNYHA has completed its second emergency preparedness drill workshops, with over 200 participants in total attending the workshops. The full-day workshop, with didactic and interactive training modules, was a collaborative effort of GNYHA, the NYC Office of Emergency Management, and representatives from member hospitals, and was developed to assist members in complying with standards established by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). The standards require hospitals to have emergency management plans that describe how they will establish and maintain programs to ensure effective responses to disasters or emergencies affecting the environment of care, including addressing the four phases of emergency management activities: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. JCAHO also requires hospitals to develop a hazard vulnerability analysis, to coordinate with the community in emergency management planning, and to test the emergency management plan twice a year, either in response to an emergency or in planned drills.

GNYHA also held two briefings on the Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS) on January 29. The briefings described HEICS and the various staff members' roles in an emergency. Detailed instructions on how and when to activate HEICS were reviewed, as were the responsibilities of the positions outlined in the HEICS command and control structure. Staff from the Regional Healthcare Emergency Management Training Center, at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, provided the training. Attendees also received a training guide, Do You Know Your Incident Command System? Ensuring Effective Emergency Response and Management, which was made possible by a grant from The Commonwealth Fund and created by GNYHA in coordination with its Emergency Preparedness Coordinating Council. The guide will be distributed to all GNYHA members and will be available on the GNYHA Web site. Although many hospitals have already provided HEICS training, this program was designed to enhance the knowledge of evening, night, and weekend staff. Participants are now eligible to take a more advanced ICS course, to be offered this spring. GNYHA plans on having additional HEICS programs in Westchester and Long Island; details will be forthcoming.