Being ready for what could happen doesn’t just happen
Here at SMS Healthcare, we thought we’d get a conversation started by talking about how we prepare for severe weather and other emergencies in the medical facilities where we provide EVS services.
At SMS Healthcare, one of our 24/7 goals is to observe the Scout Motto: Be Prepared. Just as a Boy or Girl Scout spends several years learning and implementing the required skills to always Be Prepared, the employees at every SMS Healthcare facility consistently learn about safety and emergency preparedness and strive to implement systems and protocols that allow us always to Be Prepared in an ever-changing and always challenging environment.
As the U.S. grows more crowded with more severe weather extremes, these facts confirm why this approach becomes more critical every year:
- The 2024 mid-year U.S. population is about 345.4 million, with an annual growth rate of 0.57%. Coastal population has soared to almost 40% of total U.S. population, even though coastal areas account for less than 10% of the total landmass in the Continental U.S.
- The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years. These events are becoming more expensive, but thanks to improved early warnings and disaster management, the number of deaths has decreased almost three-fold, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
- In 2023, the U.S. experienced 28 separate weather and climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each, surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020. The WMO graphic below illustrates U.S. 2023 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters:
From 1970 to 2019, weather, climate, and water hazards accounted for 50% of all disasters. Storms (54%) and floods (31%) were the most prevalent cause of recorded disasters. Storms were linked to the greatest loss of life (71%) and economic losses (78%). The U.S. accounts for 38% of global economic losses caused by weather, climate, and water hazards. Wildfires are also on the increase, as are man-made tragedies such as mass violence.
Safe water is essential for life, but too much water all at once can be life-threatening. A storm surge is the deadliest potential impact of a hurricane. Flooding, usually caused by a storm that delivers too much rainfall in a short timeframe, can also result in many deaths.
Whether it’s a humid August night with a tropical storm brewing offshore, an unstable April day with an air mass ripe for tornadic weather, a blustery snow day in January, or a beautiful late-summer day in September, SMS Healthcare always lives the Scout Motto: Be Prepared.
SMS Healthcare and its parent Service Management Systems provide EVS and housekeeping/maintenance services, respectively, at various medical facilities and public-facing buildings in 32 states. As shown on the map below, these include many locations along the U.S. East Coast, Gulf Coast, and West Coast. Additionally, the West Coast is a region where earthquake procedure is also an essential element of Preparedness.
For all emergency-related situations (severe weather, natural disaster, or a building-specific incident), SMS Healthcare has an Emergency Response Plan designed to protect the safety of all our employees. This also includes a work plan to safely clean up the facility after the emergency has passed (dependent on our specific agreement with each customer).
“We not only strive to prepare our team members through ongoing training, we also ensure the training is put into practice through our OPS360 quality assurance platform,” said Ashley Shultis, SMS Healthcare’s Business Development Coordinator. “Our monthly Safety Inspection Checklist aids in identifying any facility or structural hazards prior to an emergency or disaster occurring, so we can communicate these issues to our customers for correction.”
SMS Healthcare trains on Emergency Preparedness as a detailed monthly Safety Matters Training Topic every year. The plan is reviewed and discussed in site-level staff meetings at all SMS Healthcare locations and includes the following topics (with a tiny sample of its content):
BEFORE A SEVERE WEATHER EMERGENCY
- Tracking Weather Conditions
- Emergency Safety Teams
- Response Teams
- Preparing Your Staff
- Communicating with Your Customer
- Activating the Emergency Response Plan (ERP)
DURING A SEVERE WEATHER EMERGENCY
TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION
AFTER AN EMERGENCY
- Facility Clean-Up Efforts (upon customer request)
To learn more about how you can prepare at the personal level for the next emergency, go to https://www.ready.gov/september