Construction
Protection and Recovery of the Physical Facility Plant
The Challenge
As the scientific community increasingly gains a consensus that global surface temperatures are rising, more disasters caused by droughts, wildfires, floods, tropical cyclones, and other storms are expected in the coming years. Such events can impact human health directly by causing illnesses and injuries and indirectly via damage to health care facilities and other critical infrastructure, access to care, and economic systems. As natural disasters become more frequent and intense, health care providers must consider the potential effects of disasters and other events on the physical structure of their facilities, emergency preparedness, response efforts, and health care delivery capabilities.
The Solution
To ensure that providers can perform essential functions in the case of emergencies, providers must implement emergency plans that focus on capacities and capabilities that are critical to disaster preparedness. Epstein Becker Green can help clients maintain a proactive approach to safety through the design and construction of health care environments. Our services include, among other things:
- advising C-suite management and members of the board of directors on understanding the importance of negotiating and preparing disaster response and services agreements;
- assisting clients with insurance requirements and risk management practices;
- providing regulatory guidance for compliance with local, state, and federal regulations;
- counsel clients on the Facility Guidelines Institute’s (FGI’s) Guidelines for Design and Construction, requiring health care organizations to develop a safety risk assessment to identify and mitigate hazards and risks of adverse events;
- ensuring that clients are aware that health care organizations are required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to maintain facility-based hazard vulnerability assessments (HVAs) pursuant to CMS’s Emergency Preparedness Requirements for Medicare and Medicaid Participating Providers and Suppliers final rule, published on September 16, 2016 (CMS defines HVAs as “systematic approaches to identifying hazards or risks that are most likely to have an impact on a health care facility and the surrounding community”); and
- informing clients of prospective requirements such as the FGI’s disaster, emergency, and vulnerability assessment (DEVA), as proposed in the FGI’s 2021 Guidelines for Design and Construction, which would specifically address emergency preparedness programs as they pertain to proactive design and renovation of facilities (the DEVA would identify anticipated hazards specific to a facility’s geography as well as design features that provide resilience, hardening, flexibility, and adaptability during disasters or emergencies, and such design solutions would be coordinated with and supplement existing mandated HVAs).
Any incident that causes a loss of infrastructure or patient surge, such as a natural disaster, requires a systematic implementation of priority actions in order to facilitate a timely and effective response. Construction and renovation projects provide an opportunity to identify and mitigate or eliminate conditions in the health care built environment that may negatively affect the safety of patients, staff, or visitors.