The Colorado Health Care Association and Center for Assisted Living is committed to providing the most current and effective emergency management tools to long term care providers to insure resident and employee safety and disaster preparedness awareness.

 

Workplace Violence Resources

 

Webinar Handouts:  Power Point (due to large size this will take a few momemnts to download.)  wpvhealth.pdf

 

Workplace Violence Standard Operating Guidelines: 201304171443.pdf

 

OSHA Fact Sheet on Workplace Violence

 

Enforcement Procedures for Investigation or Inspection of Workplace Violence Incidents 

NIOSH Violence On The Job Videos for Inservice Trainings

 

 

RUN. HIDE. FIGHT. Surviving an Active Shooter Event: In the aftermath of the mass shooting event in Aurora, Colorado, the City of Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security announces the release of a video that provides key steps individuals should take if they encounter an active shooter.
Watch on YouTube

 

Exclusive limited time offer: Register and receive the Active Shooter course, no charge courtesy of AFIMAC.

 

The prevention of workplace violence has emerged as an important safety issue in and around hospitals and healthcare facilities. Workplace violence such as physical assaults, or threatening or violent behavior, are a growing problem in the workplace. The workplace may be any location either permanent or temporary where an employee performs any work-related duty.

 

Common safety and health topics:

• Violence Prevention Plan
• Management and Employee Commitment
• Worksite Analysis, Hazard
• Safety and Health Training
• Post-Incident Response
• Evaluation and Recordkeeping

Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Health Care & Social Service Workers. OSHA Publication 3148-01R, (2004). Also available as a 624 KB PDF, 47 pages.

 

Emergency Preparedness Health Care Coalitions

Is your long term care community participating in your city and/or county emergency preparedness health care coalitions?  Below are links to city and
county emergency operations plans in Colorado.  Download this tool for a guideline on health care coalition building.  You should be involving your local public health and area emergency manager in your emergency operations planning.  This information is in the process of being updated.

Adams County
Arapahoe County
Arvada
Aspen and Pitkin County
Boulder
Brighton
Broomfield (City and County)
Clear Creek County
Chaffee County
Colorado Division of Fire Safety
Colorado Office of Emergency Management
Colorado Springs
Delta County
Eagle County
El Paso County
Garfield County
Gunnison County
Grand County
Highlands Ranch Metro District
Jefferson County
Lake County
Denver (City and County)
Golden
Hudson
Lakewood
Littleton
Mesa County
Moffat County
Montrose County
Park County
Pueblo
Rio Blanco County
Summit County
Teller County
Wheat Ridge

Revised CDPHE EOP Toolkits Available

This page has been developed to assist long term care facilities (nursing homes) and assisted living residences in preparing their emergency plans.

We hope that you will use these resources when planning for, responding to and recovering from any incident in your community. We encourage you to review the regulations specific to your facility type, so that your plan will meet the necessary requirements for Colorado.

The emergency operations plan template will assist you in formatting an emergency plan or customize your existing plan. (You are not required to use this template.) Refer to the valuable resources below to tailor the plan for your community. These include standard operating guidelines, sample documents and forms, regulations, resources, other useful links and more.

 

All of these resources have been compiled in a toolkit, Tools for Emergency Planning and Management

 

CDPHE will continue to seek out & provide new and updated resources as they become available.

 

If you have questions about these resources or the planning process please contact:

Melanie.Roth-Lawson@state.co.us

Health Facilities and Emergency Medical Services Division, Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment ~or~

Yonette.Hintzen@state.co.us

Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment

The recent Denver Post reporting of the HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG), Gaps Continue to Exist in Nursing Home Emergency Preparedness and Response During Disasters: 2007-2010 Report (OEI-06-09-00270), emphasizes the importance of all health care facilities to be prepared for any and all emergencies and disasters. 

“Colorado is well ahead of the emergency preparedness curve to adequately care for the frail elderly and disabled we serve,” said David Skipper, Vice President Emergency Management, for the Colorado Health Care Association and Center for Assisted Living. Skipper has more than 35 years of experience in crisis management, nuclear, biological and chemical domestic preparedness, incident command and clinical implications of weapons of mass destruction.

Extensive and ongoing education and practical capability training in emergency preparedness and response is being provided to nursing homes and assisted living residences in Colorado through a partnership between Colorado Health Care Association (CoHCA) and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE).   CoHCA is facilitating the grant from Department of Health and Human Services to provide National Incident Management Systems (NIMS) training to every nursing home in Colorado, provide 4 statewide emergency preparedness and management courses to all assisted living communities in Colorado and revise the CDPHE Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) toolkits for nursing homes and assisted living facilities to be more user-friendly to long term care providers.

“It is important that our frail elders and disabled are not last on the priority list for evacuation, as happened with Katrina”.  Skipper said. 

 

CoHCA in partnership with the Center for Integrated Disaster Preparedness (CIDP) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine serves Colorado Healthcare providers through offering free trainings across the state. These trainings focus on creating comprehensive and integrated healthcare response systems and include ICS for Healthcare, Hazard Vulnerablity and resource sharing as well as specific trainings which work to build capability in the healthcare partner communities including Nursing Homes, Home Healthcare and Health clinics.   The director, Dr. Kreisberg, and the Medical Director Dr. Little have extensive experience building collaborative systems for the delivery of healthcare in a disaster.

“Colorado continues to sit on the fray of disaster planning through a system of carefully crafted deliverables, and integrated planning and response trainings and exercises” says Dr. Kreisberg.

The Center will offer a two-day symposium to invited public policy makers and emergency mamangement administrators to enter into a dialogue address the furture direction of Emergency Management in Colorado “Navigating Complex Change: Creating Continuity in Health Care Emergency Response and Recovery” June 6-7, 2012.

Nursing homes in Colorado are regularly performing full evacuation drills with community partners, identifying successes, challenges and documenting the results through each subsequent exercise and debriefing.  

 

Facilities should review CMS’ Emergency Preparedness checklist and use it to cross-check facility disaster preparedness plans and training with their community.

CHCA continues to work with CDPHE and other coalitions on emergency planning and preparedness issues to insure the safety and well-being of Colorado nursing home residents, staff and families.  

 

 
Colorado Assisted Living providers work on an incident command exercise in Pueblo in April.

Warning About Indoor Decorative Fountains 01/19/2012

A new study from the Wisconsin Department of Health warns against the use of indoor decorative fountains in health care facilities due to potential spread of the bacteria associated with Legionnaires’ disease. 

In 2010, eight people who had walked by a Milwaukee hospital lobby decorative water wall contracted Legionnaires’ disease. The eight individuals apparently contraction the disease after the Legionella bacteria was aerosolized by the fountain and inhaled as the individuals walked by the waterfall.  Another similar incident occurred in another health setting also involving a decorative water wall fountain, according to the study.

It is not recommended that decorative fountains be used in any enclosed health care settings according to current guidelines.
 

The study can be found in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Colorado Council for Healthcare
Integrated Preparedness

 

David Skipper, Vice President of Public Relations and Emergency Management for CoHCA is also a member of the Colorado Council for Healthcare Integrated Preparedness (CHIP) at the University of Colorado Hospital. He represents nursing homes and assisted living residences.  This group of emergency management professionals, educators and medical personnel are dedicated to finding solutions to integrate all health care providers with appropriate disaster preparedness strategies and efficient and effective emergency management.  During the past year the Council has provided basic National Incident Management Systems (NIMS) training and emergency preparedness to long term care providers statewide.