Crisis Management in Healthcare: Responding to Emergencies and Disasters

jaro education
3, November 2023
11:00 am

The use of strategies meant to assist an organisation in dealing with a sudden change or a severe negative occurrence while ensuring business continuity is known as crisis management. It includes setting rules and processes in place to mitigate, protect, and avoid a crisis. In the healthcare sector, the job of crisis management can be difficult. The what-if policies and processes generally fail when dealing with severe negative impacts like COVID-19. When healthcare facilities fight against catastrophic conditions, it is important for everyone working in the organisations to draw effective crisis management plans.

Crisis management in healthcare falls under Health Services Management, which also deals with cyber attacks, data theft, and more. Professionals working at healthcare facilities must learn the basics of how to respond to emergency situations to keep their operations running smoothly.

How to Manage Healthcare Crisis Efficiently?

Effectively handling a healthcare crisis requires leadership that is attuned to the diverse needs of the population. This leadership should be well-planned, responsive, and empathetic. Strong leadership is essential even before a crisis occurs and must persist beyond the crisis period. Healthcare crisis management encompasses more than patient concerns; it also addresses the needs of caregiving staff. Healthcare executives should focus on preparation, communication, and swift action to ensure well-prepared personnel and maintain high-quality patient care. Here are key stages for delivering effective healthcare leadership during a crisis.

Creating a Disaster Plan

Leaders preparing for a healthcare crisis should contemplate the worst-case scenario and devise measures to address all aspects of it. Even though the organisation should agree on standard procedures for dealing with a crisis, it should also be able to adapt to any unforeseen circumstances relating to the event. Considerations that should be addressed in a plan will be:

Objective of the plan
Contact details for employees
Technological equipment requirement
Recovery procedures
Plans for mobile setup
Testing the plan
Steps for rebuilding
Changes to the plans (if and when needed)

Forming a Crisis Leadership Team

Creating a team to enable a crisis response, preferably before the problem arises, should be a top priority for leadership. Typically, the team should comprise members from the following business areas:

Human resources
Department leadership
Board of Directors
Marketing and Communication
Executive management

This group should be prepared to communicate with various departments, analyse problems, and provide solutions while leading the crisis response.

Sharing Information with Everyone

In crisis leadership, transparency is essential, and crisis response information should be disseminated as widely as feasible. It is preferable to share the facts face to face at first, even if by video. However, the message should not end with one announcement. Repetition of information over many communication channels helps guarantee that patients, the general public, and employees have received and comprehended it.

Looking Out for Credible Information

Getting responses from reputable sources is part of strong crisis leadership. The Centre for Creative Leadership emphasises the importance of acquiring and sharing credible information for various reasons, such as:

To ease apprehension about uncertainties.
To provide explicit guidance on the next steps.
To show both employees and the public that leadership is attentive and engaged.

Extending Care for Employees and Patients

A healthcare crisis necessitates remarkable patient care. At the same time, the enormous demands placed on medical services by a crisis might leave healthcare organisations with insufficient resources to offer emergency treatment. Thus, effective healthcare crisis management involves balancing patient reassurance while preparing medical workers to deal with the stress they confront. Healthcare providers however, may not have faced such an extreme situation. So, it is critical for leaders to create a clear action plan that they will communicate with the medical personnel.

To help meet employee needs so they can extend care to patients, leaders must:

Communicate about the overall expectation of the extreme situation, COVID-19, for instance.
Leaders should seek expertise and resources from outside organisations through collaborations. For example, during the COVID-19 epidemic, several engineering and industrial organisations stepped up to create novel treatment procedures and protective equipment.
Leaders that put employee needs, including physical endurance and job satisfaction, first can help employees avoid burnout and guarantee top-notch patient care.

What Are the Responsibilities of a Crisis Management Team?

The responsibilities of the crisis management team extend beyond the immediate disaster, just as healthcare executives are required to manage a crisis at all stages: before, during, and after the event. The following are some particular responsibilities they must perform.

Planning to Fight the Emergency or Disaster

Planning different crisis situations is one of the prime responsibilities of the crisis management teams in healthcare facilities. Teams should include activities like:

Assessing stakeholders’ worries about a possible catastrophe.
Creating plans to assist in maintaining the financial stability of the healthcare facility.
Making and abiding by a crisis response strategy, including how to manage internal and external crisis communication.
Identifying and assuring the availability of resources to respond to the crisis.
Training employees in crisis response techniques.
Analysing the possible vulnerabilities of the organisation in the event of a crisis.
Creating health and safety guidelines for staff to follow throughout the crisis.

Helping Leaders During an Emergency

In the event of a healthcare emergency, it is essential for the team to work in tandem with the organisation’s management to execute the established strategy for addressing the situation. The following are the crucial actions undertaken by the team during such emergencies:

Determining the occurrence of the disaster.
Knowing how the crisis or disaster is going to impact employees, patients and the general public.
Identifying the right time for establishing the crisis plan.
Interacting with patients, employees and other stakeholders about the crisis.
Collaborating with staff assistance.