Continuity of Operations Planning for EMS Agencies

Continuity of Operations Planning for EMS Agencies Raphael M. Barishansky Developed for EMS EXPO 2013

Why does your EMS agency need a COOP plan ? • “Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth” Mike Tyson

Why you really need a plan

Today's objectives • Define Continuity of Operations (COOP) • Objectives of COOP planning • Identify the essential steps in formulating your Continuity of Operations plan. • Identify the processes, resources, and tasks necessary to implement a successful COOP program. • Concluding thoughts

What is COOP? • COOP allows for the continuation of the essential functions of government departments or agencies during any incident or emergency that may disrupt normal operations • COOP addresses the recovery of critical and essential government operations in the event of an emergency

What is COOP? • In either case, the rapid availability of an effective COOP plan facilitates the performance of an EMS agency's functions both during, and after, an unforeseen emergency or other situation that may interrupt normal services • The essence is not only the plan – its practicing it and having people who know how to implement it

When is COOP Utilized or Activated? • The disruption can be short-term – caused by a power failure, for example – where possessing a backup capability (e.g., systems, personnel, processes, and files) might quickly resolve the situation • It can also be longer-term, though – perhaps in the wake of a natural disaster when services are affected for several days or, in some cases, weeks

What COOP does • Details how essential functions are managed during disruption of operations; staffing, and/or, if facilities, vehicles, & supplies are damaged or inaccessible. • Uncovers functional dependencies and priorities for recovery • Promotes a culture of personal preparedness

Objectives of COOP Planning • Ensuring continuous performance of your agency’s essential functions/operations • Organized planning approach - CODIFY • Achieving a timely and orderly recovery • Assure succession of key leadership • Resumption of full service to the community as soon as possible

What would your community do without you? • Does your agency have resources for resiliency & • sustainability for a prolonged period? • Are there key members always relied upon? • Are there other EMS resources you rely on? Do they have a COOP? • Is there hospital or other infrastructure damaged? • Will transport time be prolonged? • Is there potential for patient evacuations? • Will you provide service for other communities?

Essential steps Create a plan and procedures that address all-hazards assumptions– this primarily entails assembling the optimum members of a planning team: decision makers who fully understand the agency and its capabilities as well as its truly critical functions

Essential steps Statement of purpose • This statement need not be long, but it should summarize concisely the intent of your agency's COOP. • This statement should be able to make the uninitiated aware of who you are, what the essential functions of your agency are and why you are developing a COOP.

Essential steps Risks/hazards identified • This section of your plan will detail any known or expected community risks and/or hazards that have the potential to imperil your agency's operations and cause activation of your COOP efforts. • Obviously, these risks are variable and dependent on your specific geographic location, as well as additional considerations.

Essential steps This identification of risks and hazards should be done in cooperation with your local emergency management officials, with input from your public health authorities and hospitals, who will all have a good idea of what the area has seen before and how it will likely impact your EMS agency.

Essential steps Plan objectives • This section will spell out the major objectives of your COOP. • For anyone looking at the COOP for the first time, this is an opportunity to understand why your EMS agency needs a COOP, why the COOP is being written and what it hopes to accomplish

Essential steps • The key objectives of this continuity plan are: • Continue critical business operations • Minimize the duration of a serious disruption to operations and resources • Minimize immediate damage and losses • Identify critical lines of business and supporting functions • Establish management succession and emergency powers • Work with additional entities toward continuation of effective emergency response

Essential steps Identify critical functions and services • Identification of the services that your EMS Agency delivers on a regular basis • Ranking and prioritizing the order of importance of these needed during times of emergency

Essential steps Critical functions are the core of what your agency does • By law • By charter • By expectation Your agency’s business functions that must be continued with no or minimal disruption

Essential steps Identify key personnel and orders of succession– this requires clearly outlining who will be responding during one of the aforementioned emergencies and what role that person (or persons) will play. This section asks the questions "Who is in charge if it is not the traditional boss? What if your top management is not available? Who is at the next level?”

Essential steps Critical elements include: • Select the minimum number of your EMS agency staff needed to carry out the services needed to continue in an emergency. • Ensure the correct persons are chosen and that they have a thorough understanding of the strengths, weaknesses, capacity and overall capabilities of your EMS agency.

Essential steps • You should identify 2-3 successors for key leadership positions to ensure coverage for illness and absenteeism (some projections say to expect up to 40% of the workforce to be absent during a severe pandemic) • These key positions may include: • Executive Director/President • Director of Operations/Captain • Medical Director • Others ?

Essential steps Delegation of Authority • Documents legal authority for officials – including those below the head of the agency - to make key policy decisions during a COOP situation • This is not the same as Orders of Succession – authority has a beginning and an end

Essential steps Identify communication systems and emergency lists– This may be one of the last steps of the COOP planning process, but it is also one of the more crucial Communication systems that will remain functional even when a large-scale emergency strikes must be identified and tested well in advance

Essential steps Identify alternate facilities- points to consider: • Assure whatever put your primary facility out of commission hasn’t/will not affect your alternate • Only what has been previously identified as essential must be re-located • Deconflicting

Essential steps Comprehensive emergency contact lists information about accounts, banks of record, landlords, insurance agents/companies, public works entities, media outlets, telephone companies – and constantly updated Include an overall inventory list – e.g., all assets including their dates of purchase, initial cost, and identification/serial number – and a current list of employee contact information (including home phones, cell phones, and local addresses)

Essential steps • What triggers or events will cause you to actually activate the COOP? These should be considerations that will impact your EMS agency's operations to some degree. • Remember that this activation section should cover any incident or emergency that has the potential to disrupt normal operations, whether on a short-term basis or even longer term, when services are impacted for several days or weeks.

Essential steps For instance, in the case of pandemic, this could include a significant number of absent employees and its impact on your staffing levels; in a natural disaster, it could include damage to your physical facilities and/or vehicles

Additional items Inform employees of the plan, ensuring that those employees with responsibilities in the plan have been properly trained, and planning for high employee absenteeism – as well as determining the feasibility of at least some staff working from home/telecommuting

Buy-in The most important factor, though, is to ensure that the agency leadership fully understands the need for and purpose of a COOP plan, and makes development and implementation of the plan a high priority

Concluding thoughts Your EMS COOP must be a "living" plan, which means that its procedures and processes must be not only updated but also practiced/exercised on a regular basis

Concluding thoughts • Engage your EMS agency in understanding their dependencies and vulnerabilities. • Develop practical, prudent strategies and plans to maintain EMS operations. • Maintain your plans so they remain relevant over time – your COOP is not “set it and forget it”

COOP Resources Templates: • FEMA Continuity Plan Template http://www.fema.gov/txt/about/org/ncp/coop/continuity_plan_non_federal.txt • Online Disaster-Planning Tool for Cultural and Civic Institutions: http://www.dplan.org/ • The Business Continuity Maturity Model: http://www.virtual-corp.net/html/bcmm.html(*free with registration)

COOP Resources Training: (FEMA EMI) http://training.fema.gov/ • IS-546 Continuity of Operations (COOP) Awareness Course • IS-547a Introduction to Continuity of Operations (COOP)

“Plans are nothing ……planning is everything.” Dwight D. Eisenhower

Questions ? Raphael M. Barishansky rbarishansky@gmail.com Twitter: @rbarishansky

Continuity of Operations Planning for EMS Agencies