AHRQ Update: Guides Offer Hospitals Advice on Emergency Evacuation, Assessment and Recovery

AHRQ Releases Decisionmaking Guides to Support Hospital Evacuation and Reoccupation
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released two new guides to help hospital leaders and emergency planners make the decision to evacuate a facility during a disaster, and when and how to safely return after the event.
The “Hospital Evacuation Decision Guide” http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/hospevacguide/ helps decisionmakers better understand what factors to consider when making the decision to evacuate, shelter in place, or defer the decision to evacuate and reassess as the situation evolves. Its companion, “Hospital Assessment and Recovery Guide,” http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/hosprecovery/ includes a checklist to facilitate the assessment of infrastructure components critical to ensuring that staff and patients can safely return to the hospital following a disaster. These new guides supplement existing hospital emergency plans, which often do not include such decisionmaking guidance.

These resources were developed by AHRQ with funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

More than 60 other Public Health Emergency Preparedness tools and resources are available on the AHRQ Web site at: http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/.