Behavioral Health Integrator

What can we learn from past emergencies? This session focused on real-world case studies of health center emergency preparedness, with a focus on maintaining continuity of care and EHR access during crises. We analyzed what worked, what didn't, and how you can apply the lessons to your own organization.

The Health IT Emergency Response Plan Assessment Tool helps health centers evaluate and enhance their emergency plans, focusing on optimizing Health IT use during crises.

The exercise cards in this set present scenarios and response-related questions designed to provide a quick (5–10 minute) method for health center staff to: Refresh knowledge of the content in their emergency and cyber incident response plans; Examine and troubleshoot procedures in their emergency and cyber incident response plans; Identify improvements to their emergency and cyber incident response plans; and Increase staff capacity to operationalize the actions outlined in their emergency and cyber incident response plans. The scenarios and questions on these cards can serve as a starting point to spark discussions amongst your team about scenarios and responses that are specific to the context of your health center (e.g., what extreme weather events are most common in your area?). The first five cases describe environmental scenarios, and the last two cases describe cybersecurity scenarios.