KEY COMPONENTS OF PATIENT EVACUATION

•   Shelter-in-Place

•   Evacuation

     –Horizontal/ Vertical

     –Partial

     –Complete

•    Shelter-in-Place vs. Evacuation

Sheltering-in-Place

Sheltering-in-Place is a protective action strategy that is taken to maintain patient care within a facility and to limit the movement of patients, staff and visitors to protect people and property from a hazard. Sheltering-in-place is the preferred option.

If a decision is made to shelter-in-place because of an internal and/or external environmental hazard, a facility’s incident management staff notifies local authorities, if appropriate, and makes an assessment for the need to initiate environmental engineering interventions.

The primary decisions are:

– How to protect patients, staff and visitors by moving to a more secure area will be made by the facility’s incident management staff in collaboration with the response agency’s incident management staff

– If sheltering-in-place is expected to last for more than 24 hours, the incident management system should inform all departments that all resources are to be conserved