Get Clinic Emergency Preparedness Project Emergency Operations

Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) April 7, 2009. Hospitals are required to have an Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) which describes how a facility will respond to and recover from all hazards. It is inclusive of the six critical elements within the Joint Commission's Emergency Management Standards: Communications.

The State government EOP. Establishes the framework within which local EOPs are created and through which the Federal Government becomes involved in response, recovery, and mitigation.

As mentioned in CPG 101 the traditional functional EOP format is the most popular and widely used. It generally provides for three major sections the basic plan, functional annexes, and hazard specific annexes.

These common elements allow you to prepare for and protect yourself and your animals from disaster. Emergency managers think of disasters as recurring events with four phases: Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery. The following diagram illustrates the relationship of the four phases of emergency management.

Recovery operations are an extremely important phase in the Emergency Management continuum and yet one that is often overlooked. The Incident Command System team is responsible for the implementation of the Recovery phase.

FEMA recommends a format consisting of: Purpose, Situation and Assumptions, Concept of Operations, Assignment of Responsibilities, Administration and Logistics, Plan Development and Maintenance, and Authorities and References. Chapter 4 describes these components in more detail.

The Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) provides the structure and processes that the organization utilizes to respond to and initially recover from an event. The EOP is therefore the response and recovery component of the EMP.

However, preparedness is only one phase of emergency management. Current thinking defines four phases of emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. There are entire courses on each of these phases.

The emergency operations plan (EOP) details what the facility or agency will DO during a disaster (incident command implementation, command center location and activities, specific plans by department, etc.).