Long-Term Care Toolkit Appendix M: Exercise, Evaluation, and Improvement Planning Checklist

Exercise, evaluation, and improvement planning checklist

Plans, policies, and procedures are tested at least annually in one or more exercises, or real-world incidents that are evaluated and result in corrective actions for plan improvement.

Emergency response plan 

• Review and update the facilities hazard and vulnerabilities assessment (HVA) annually.
• Review and update the emergency operations plan (EOP) to meet your current needs and identify gaps annually.
• Review and update all memorandums of understanding (MOU) with response services, such as sheltering facilities, transportation, and emergency medical services (EMS), annually.
• Distribute the EOP to your staff and identify where it is located in your facility. Include distribution and coordination with appropriate emergency response partners.

Providing trained staff 

• Identify staff for emergency roles and responsibilities. Update their personal contact information as needed.
• Conduct training seminars and workshops annually to familiarize staff with the EOP, especially the evacuation plan part of the EOP.
• Plan an announced staff notification drill, then conduct unannounced drills. After each drill, evaluate the numbers contacted and how quickly they responded and try to improve on the next drill.
• Identify the equipment and methods used for communication with your staff, patients, and emergency responders during an incident.
• Update emergency response contact information: phone numbers and contracted sheltering facilities annually.

Ensure all equipment is functional

• Phones, computer systems, alarms, general addressing systems, two-way radios, 800 MHz radios, ham radios (all that apply).
• Facility power generators, emergency lighting systems, flashlights.

Conduct exercises to demonstrate plans and procedures in an exercise or real response

• Identify equipment, plans, or procedures that need to be tested or demonstrated.
• Identify staff who would benefit from experience in their primary or alternate response role.
• Plan one or more drills for testing equipment, notification procedures, and other standard operating procedures annually.
• Plan a seminar to share the EOP and any policy, plan, or procedural changes with your staff.
• Plan a workshop to bring together key staff to develop or improve a procedure or plan.
• Plan a tabletop discussion exercise to demonstrate how your all-hazard plans, policies, or procedures would apply to a specific type of incident and for your staff to gain experience.
• Plan a functional exercise to demonstrate a part of your plan, test a procedure, and give additional experience to your staff. Evaluate and improve your plan.
• Complete an exercise (definitions below) with your response staff and/or with other response partners to test your planned response to a specific type of incident. Evaluate and improve your plan.
• Develop a one-year or multiple-year training and exercise plan to provide a timeline for accomplishing your training goals.
• Track the completion of corrective actions from your exercise after action reports in a facility-wide improvement plan.

Evaluate and improve your plan

After conducting any type of drill or exercise, it is valuable to complete an after-action report (AAR) and improvement plan (IP) to see where you can best update and improve your plan. There are three different types of AAR/IPs below.

After action report/improvement plan template

The AAR/IP aligns exercise objectives with preparedness doctrine to include the National Preparedness Goal and related frameworks and guidance. Exercise information required for preparedness reporting and trend analysis is included; users are encouraged to add additional sections as needed to support their own organizational needs.

• The AAR/IP templates are listed under Appendix M.2, M.3, and M.4. They are able to be printed or used as fill in the blanks. 

Definitions

• Tabletop exercise (TTX): A tabletop exercise involves key personnel discussing simulated scenarios in an informal setting. TTXs can be used to assess plans, policies, and procedures.
• Drill. A drill is a coordinated, supervised activity usually employed to test a single, specific operation or function within a single entity (e.g., a fire department conducts a decontamination drill).
• Functional exercise (FE): A functional exercise examines and/or validates the coordination, command, and control between various multi-agency coordination centers (e.g., emergency operation center, joint field office, etc.). A functional exercise does not involve any "boots on the ground" (i.e., first responders or emergency officials responding to an incident in real time).
• Full-scale exercises (FSE): A full-scale exercise is a multi-agency, multijurisdictional, multidiscipline exercise involving functional (e.g., joint field office, emergency operation centers, etc.) and "boots on the ground" response (e.g., firefighters decontaminating mock victims).