Progression of the MHPC’s Long Term Care Program
The MHPC’s Long Term Care Program began several years ago and has grown into a solid program that is responsible for providing regional Long Term Care facilities with education and assistance when needed. A need arose for the coalition to become involved with regional long-term care facilities because it was found that though they were a crucial part of the healthcare world, they were severely under-engaged in terms of emergency management. Throughout the past three years a variety of education opportunities have been presented to regional long-term care partners including Intro to Emergency Management courses, Developing Emergency Operations Plans courses, and Active Shooter courses. Through these educational opportunities, networking took place and long-term care facilities were able to see how beneficial the coalition could be not only to their facilities but more importantly, to their patients.
Due to education and relationship-building, long-term care facilities have reached out to MHPC for assistance several times throughout the past year. MHPC has assisted with providing HVAC units to facilities without power, cots for staff to sleep on during inclement weather, and cots for patients that were evacuated to North Carolina during Hurricane Matthew. These facilities were able to maintain patient care without compromising their patient’s safety. MHPC encourages our regional long-term care partners to reach out to us if there is an issue, either expected or unexpected!
With the implementation of the new CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule, the Metrolina Healthcare Preparedness Coalition become increasingly more involved in ensuring that regional Long Term Care facilities are fully prepared once the rule takes effect in November 2017. Exercise and Education Coordinator, KC Bernesser and Long Term Care Program Coordinator, Hannah Gompers have been collaborating for the past two months in order to create an educational workshop that will provide the fundamentals of the new CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule, and basic foundations of how to plan, design, evaluate, and the assessment of a tabletop exercise. These workshops will begin April 27th and will be held monthly in the Metrolina Region. Each workshop will have two CEUs and will last two hours.
If you are interested in learning more about what the MHPC Long Term Care Program does or how it can positively impact your facility, please feel free to reach out to Hannah Gompers at Hannah.gompers@carolinas.org.
