CRAFTING A STRATEGIC PLAN BEFORE DISASTER STRIKES At the same time, senior living has been
upping its game, bringing a new level of professionalism to the complex craft of emergency planning. “It has evolved into more of a written plan. Twelve or 13 years ago we were doing this in a thoughtful man- ner, but it was done by just a few people who handled everything,” said Michael Gentry, senior vice president of care & life guid- ance at Atria Senior Living. “Now it’s more formal, we have teams handling diff erent aspects of the plan. We have a command center. It’s much more scientifi c.” On the surface, emergency planning is a
straightforward aff air. Assess potential risks. Make plans and train frequently. Establish relationships that you can activate in a time of crisis. Those are the basics. In practice, there’s a lot more to it.
Building a plan A fi re isn’t a fl ood isn’t a tornado. An elope- ment requires a diff erent response for an ac- tive shooter. While it’s important to have a specifi c plan for any given emergency, that doesn’t necessarily mean executive directors must carry in their heads the detailed specs on a half-dozen diff erent response scenarios.
With three major hurricanes, assorted wildfi res, drought, fl ooding, and freezes, 2017 was the most expensive year on record for natural disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Sixteen major events rang up $306 billion in damage.
Rather, emergency response experts en- courage what’s known as an “all-hazards” approach, with plans that are rich in spe- cifi c detail but general enough to be put into play regardless of the emergency at hand. “The probability that a specifi c hazard will impact your business is hard to determine. That’s why it’s important to consider many diff erent threats and hazards and the likeli- hood they will occur,” according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In this model, planners identify potential
risks, assess vulnerabilities, and consider the potential impact of a given scenario. The idea is to focus attention on those potential disasters that are most likely to occur and
where the impact would be most signifi cant, and to build the bulk of your disaster plan around those high-risk events. The outcome of this risk assessment will
vary by community based on a range of fac- tors. Are you in a fl ood plain or a tornado zone? Are your residents independent or higher acuity? What local resources can you count on—government agencies, tertiary care facilities—in the event of emergency? This is the first lesson in the emergency planning playbook: No two emergency plans will ever be exactly the same. What are the implications for senior liv- ing? It means that regardless of the size of the company, plans must be created locally, or at least be signifi cantly tailored at the community level. Take for instance Northbridge Compa-
nies. With 16 communities in the portfolio, “we have a template that is very, very ba- sic,” said Shawn Bertram, vice president of operations. “We have a framework that we give to all our executive directors as well as our maintenance directors, and it is then tai- lored to every property. The fi re panel may not always be located in the front vestibule. It may be located in the back receiving area in one building. Or the water shutoff s may not be in the same location. We want to leave those details up to the site so that they can communicate that to their teams and ensure everyone is on the same page.” The basic plan may lay out a procedure
for evacuation, but it’s up to the executive directors to put in place the mechanisms that make that happen. “We want to em- power the executive directors and the on- site team. They need to have transportation plans, they need lodging arrangements, but we don’t tell them who it needs to be,” Ber- tram said. “We are a small regional com- pany and we like our executive directors to be able to deal with their neighbors at the local level, to have these local relationships.”
8 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
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