Our History
Crisis Management History
Northwell Health established their corporate Emergency Management program in 1999 to facilitate a unified and coordinated response to emergencies throughout the health system. The original goals of the Emergency Management program were to reduce the loss of life and property, to protect Northwell Health's sites from natural, technological, and man-made hazards, and to ensure that an Environment of Care is maintained in all health system facilities.
Our team continuously works to strengthen the four basic phases of comprehensive emergency management, in and out of the health system:
Mitigation: Activities that eliminate or reduce the chance of occurrence or the effects of a disaster within a system facility.
Preparedness: Planning how the health system will respond in the event of a disaster or emergency and working to increase the resources available within the system to react effectively.
Response: Activities designed to provide emergency assistance to facilities, victims, or the community, to reduce the likelihood of further impact from the event.
Recovery: Assisting the facilities to return to normal operating activities.
Crisis Management: Emergency Management Reenvisioned
Since its creation, the program has been modernized to meet the growing challenges we face in healthcare and is now called Crisis Management.
As Crisis Management, our team places an emphasis on making disaster preparedness and crisis awareness part of our daily decision making with an increased focus on enterprise risk, continuity of operations, disaster risk reduction, training integrations into our regular operations, and adoption of new federal and state regulatory standards in our disaster management plans. Overall, four main competencies are integrated into our daily operations:
Business Continuity Planning: Acts as a prevention and recovery system to protect personnel and assets to ensure they can continue to function in the event of disaster.
Crisis Management: The process by which an organization deals with a disruptive and unexpected event that threatens to harm the organization or its stakeholders. Crisis management processes occurr before, during, and after an event.
Emergency Management: The managerial group charged with creating frameworks within an organization and communities which reduces vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters.
Clinical Preparedness: Teams charged with maintaining the readiness of the clinical staff through identification of training and competency requirements needed to maintain patient care activities.