Standard and Emergency Procedures are
Integral to Performance Support
As the Gulf oil spill and hurricane Katrina
remind us, disasters tend to go from bad to
devastating when operating procedures -
emergency and otherwise - do not exist, are
not accessible, or are out of date. For
every massive oil spill, there are thousands
of smaller-scale "disasters" every day across
all industries. The stories behind the
catastrophes are always the same:
Out-of-the-ordinary events severely disrupt
daily life for individuals, businesses,
government agencies, and even entire
countries - all because standard and
emergency operating procedures are not what
they should be.
As a core component of our
performance-centered solutions, we have been
developing and delivering usable, accessible,
current and actionable operating procedures
that make a difference. So we decided to
further apply the methodology by partnering
with organizations, like Healthcare Financial
Management Association (HFMA), to provide
educational webinars to its members. The most
recent series is targeted to hospital
business operations and is titled,
"Is
Your Hospital Prepared to Protect Revenue in
an Emergency (and Beyond)?" NY HFMA
chapters already have over 100 registered,
and counting, for our June 3rd webinar.
Check out NY HFMA's promotion of our webinars
at
http://www.hfmametrony.org.
A variety of our public webinars that are
scheduled through June and July can be found
here:
http://www.epsscentral.net/events.
Other applications of performance support to
emergency procedures include the Arlington
County Office of Emergency Response, which
asked us to convert its hard-copy Emergency
Operations Center Reference Guide to our
highly usable format. We accomplished this
otherwise laborious task
in under two
weeks (!). Arlington is now endorsing
this work with other local governments. We
recently presented to an enthusiastic group
of Emergency Response Managers, and the
inquiries are flowing in! Often, we find the
most straightforward applications of
performance support are those that arguably
have the greatest impact. Referring once
again to the Gulf oil spill, various news
programs have reported the following:
-
"almost 90% of the processes hadn't been
approved / signed-off"
-
"the drawings and emergency procedures were
not right"
-
"we couldn't figure out how to engage the
emergency shutoff."
As most have already concluded, the disaster
was avoidable. Imagine if the procedures were
accessible, usable, current and actionable.
The people who do the work need to know
exactly what to do as an emergency unfolds,
quickly and with confidence. As we have said
for years, we need just enough, just in
time.
We are encouraged that our recent activities
will better inform how to make operating
procedures actionable, accessible, usable and
current, so that disruption caused by
disasters can be controlled.
Regards,
Gary J. Dickelman
Chief Executive Officer
|
Shirah L. Cohen
President
|
