Professional Documents
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Table of Contents
1. Purpose ................................................................................................................................................. 2
2. Objectives: ............................................................................................................................................ 2
3. Definitions ............................................................................................................................................. 2
4. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
5. Emergency Risk Management and Risk Management Contingency Planning Framework .................. 4
6. Implementation Stages: ........................................................................................................................ 5
6.1. Risk Assessment and Analysis: ...................................................................................................... 5
6.2. Risk Mitigation and Planning: ....................................................................................................... 5
6.3. Risk Management Contingency Planning: .................................................................................... 5
7. Drivers of the Framework ..................................................................................................................... 6
7.1. Risk communication: ..................................................................................................................... 6
7.2. Risk Monitoring and Review: ........................................................................................................ 6
8. The Framework in Practice: .................................................................................................................. 6
8.1. Covid-19 Risk Control Assessment Checklist for Services ............................................................. 6
8.2. Risk Management Plan for Covid-19............................................................................................. 6
8.3. Covid-19 Risk Management Contingency Plan ............................................................................. 7
9. Support to Managing Crisis: .................................................................................................................. 7
10. Responsibilities: ................................................................................................................................ 8
11. Appendices:....................................................................................................................................... 8
12. References ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Appendix 1. Covid-19 Risk Control Assessment Checklist for HMC Services ................................................ 9
Appendix 2. Risk Management Plan for Covid-19 ...................................................................................... 13
Appendix 3. Hazard Vulnerability Analysis (HVA) ....................................................................................... 14
Appendix 4. Covid-19 Risk Management Contingency Plan ....................................................................... 15
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1. Purpose
This concept note has been developed by the Corporate Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
(CQIPS) Department to guide the response of this Department in providing support to HMC services
during the Covid-19 Pandemic in undertaking the following:
• comprehensive risk management to mitigate the risks and minimize the impact of Covid-19
Pandemic in HMC services;
• risk management contingency planning to deal with unforeseen threatening situations that
could seriously disrupt the care system and harm HMC employees and patients; and
• assessing the impact of business interruption in the event when an emergency situation
happens and providing feedback to the incident management team.
2. Objectives:
Key objectives of this program is to:
3. Definitions
Major Incident – Any event which, due to its size, nature and/or complexity, is likely to cause serious
disruption and would overwhelm one or more of HMC’s services.
Risk - The expression of the likelihood and impact of an event that would affect HMC’s ability to achieve
its objectives.
Risk management - is a process of, risk identification, evaluation of risk, response development, and
implementation of risk control, continuous monitoring and review of mitigation plan to prevent and
reduce the risk of injury to patient, staff, visitors and ensure safe environment.
Mitigation – refers to measures that prevent an emergency, reduce the chance of an emergency
happening, or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable emergencies.
Hazard – a process, phenomenon or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury or other health
impacts, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.
A hazard vulnerability analysis – is a process for identifying a facility’s highest vulnerabilities to natural and
man-made hazards and the direct and indirect effect these hazards may have on the facility.
Crisis – an abnormal situation, or perception, which threatens the operations, employees, patients or
reputation of an HMC facility. It has the potential to negatively affect the smooth running of an HMC
facility’s operations, its image and credibility.
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Preparedness - the knowledge and capacity of an HMC facility to effectively anticipate, respond to, and
recovery from the impacts of a wide range of likely, imminent or current events.
Readiness - the ability to quickly and appropriately respond when required. The outcome of planning,
allocation of resources, training, exercising and organizing to build, sustain and improve operational
capabilities based on risk assessment.
Recovery – actions taken to return the facility to normal day-to-day operations after the termination is
announced.
Contingency planning – is developing responses in advance for various situations that might impact
business. Although negative events probably come to mind first, a good contingency plan should also
address positive events that might disrupt operations - such as a very large order.
Hospital Major Incident Command Centre (MICC) – the place at each HMC facilities where the ON-Call
Leadership staff gather to support the management of the Major Incident within their own institution.
Risk Management Crisis Team – is the team of assessors deployed by Corporate Quality Improvement
and Patient Safety Department to services in the event of an emergency situation to support the impact
assessment of business interruption and provide feedback to the incident management team. Risk
Management Crisis Team may also provide assistance to leadership and management of business
operation on the ground as needed.
4. Introduction
HMC’s Major Incident Program is activated in response to events which are likely to seriously disrupt and
overwhelm one or more HMC services. As part of this program, every Corporate Department is required
to develop their response program, train staff and test and execute their programs in relevant parts of
HMC services.
The Coronavirus Pandemic has had intense impact on health and social services across the globe. It has
the potential to gradually pose higher level of risks to operation of services as the outbreak start to peak
the curve. Servicers may become overwhelmed, and face risks such as hampered communication,
shortage of essential patient materials, PPE and pharmaceuticals, or compromised safety and continuity
of care.
Risk Management is a core component of the HMC Major Incident Program. During major incidents, the
emergency risk management process is led by the HMC Major Incident Planning Team at the corporate
level. However, CQIPS is responsible to provide on the ground technical assistance to individual HMC
services in identifying and managing local hazards that poses risk to the safety of their staff and patients.
Risk management is a proactive approach of decision making to determine the best course of strategies
to safeguard quality and safety of care. Nonetheless, during large scale outbreaks the capacity of health
systems could be stretched to the extent that existing controls or mitigation strategies may not be
adequate to prevent major incidents happening, or situations may arise that seriously disrupt normal
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business. Services will need to be prepared for warning signs of these situations and have contingency risk
response strategies in place to swiftly recover.
Risk Management Contingency Planning enables system capacity to initiate or take appropriate and timely
actions to support the service response. Contingency planning for emergency situations is crucial to help
minimize the disruption of care system, and reduce possible hazards created by the situation. Triggered
by pre-determined warning signs, a risk contingency strategy comes to effect temporarily as a recovery
mechanism and continues until the time when the service is capable to return to normal.
One of the aims of CQIPS is to make sure a consistent approach is taken to risk management where best
practices and lessons learned are disseminated across the whole of HMC. To this end, the Corporate
Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQIPS) Department has developed this response program to
Covid-19 Pandemic with a focus on technical support to HMC services risk management and risk
management contingency planning. Moreover, in the event when an emergency happens, the
Department deploys a Risk Management Crisis Team who provides assistance in assessing the impact of
business interruption and managing emerging risks. The Risk Management Crisis Team works in close
collaboration with Senior Leaders of the affected service and incident management team.
Governance
Human Resources Examine and
Communication and Collaboration
Communication solutions
Monitoring and Review
Infection Control
Accept the risk
Surge Capacity Risk Execute Risk
analysis Contingency
Continuity of Care Avoid the risk
Plan
Surveillance
Control the risk
Consumables
Technology Transfer the risk End Triggers
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6. Implementation Stages:
6.1. Risk Assessment and Analysis:
The novel Coronavirus Pandemic exposes HMC services to new and emerging risks. An effective risk
management program that is capable of preventing hazards requires a comprehensive assessment of key
aspects of care system. At this stage services undertake risk assessment and analysis of those areas that
are critical in establishment and maintenance of a service response to the emergency of Covid-19
Pandemic.
• Accept the risk: where a risk does not have much of an impact on business, a service may accept
that the risk might happen and decide to deal with it if it does happen. For example, a service
accepts the risk of accommodating three beds in a two-bed in-patient room where space allows
that during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
• Avoid the risk: when a risk has potentially large impact on business, a service may totally avoid
the risk. For example, a service avoids admitting patients other than Covid-19 to prevent the
risk of hospital acquired Covid-19 infection.
• Control the risk: what it means is that if a risk occurs, there are mitigation strategies in place to
limit the impact of the risk, that if the problem it creates is smaller and easier to fix. For example,
to control the risk of disease transmission, the patient flow for emergency department is
changed and all Covid-19 suspected cases are screened, tested and treated in a space separate
to the service main emergency department.
• Transfer the risk: it is a strategy used to transfer the risk to another party. For example, a service
transfers all Covid-19 patients to other designated service, and keep their in-patient department
totally Covid-19 free.
6.3. Risk Management Contingency Planning:
While risk mitigation strategies may be successful most of the time in preventing hazards, it is important
to have a backup plan when a situation occurs where the expected result fails to materialize. This could
be situations where the care system becomes temporarily overloaded with number of patients during the
peak of pandemic, or a natural or manmade disaster happens that disrupts service operation. Preparing
in advance and knowing how you intend to react in the face of those situations enable services to swiftly
manage the situation with the least harm to patient, employees and business operation.
At this stage services analyze their hazard vulnerability and identify the highest hazards with major impact
on HMC service, its patients and employees where the facility may not have adequate preparedness and
response capacity. This exercise subsequently informs planning for proactive risk contingency strategies,
what is also called ‘plan B’. These plans are executed only when the situation is triggered, and ended soon
as the situation starts to recover.
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7. Drivers of the Framework
The success of this program is underpinned by the following two important factors:
• risk awareness and understanding and promoting health protecting behaviors amongst
employees is paramount for the safety of both HMC staff and patients.
• informing the Executives about the probable risks assists in reallocation of resources and
attracting better support for safety mechanisms.
• having open communication channels between different levels of a service further assists in
people bringing forward the risks they identify during the day to day operation, and proposing
practical solutions to mitigate those risks.
The following tools will be used to translate the framework into practice:
The checklist outlines a number of key domains detailed with several questions that flags possible risks to
sufficiency and effectiveness of a service response (See appendix 1).
The Risk Management Plan is a dynamic tool that needs to be regularly monitored and reviewed when:
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• the situation presents new emerging risks.
A hazard vulnerablity analsysis (HVA) is conducted for each service to identify the service’s highest
vulnerabilities to natural and man-made hazards and the direct and indirect effect these hazards may have on
the service operation. Based on the ranking of hazard scenarios the following are documented in the Risk
Management Contingency Plan:
• A minimum of five top scenarios are listed in the Risk Management Contingency Plan;
• Activation triggers are identified for each scenario which determines when a risk contingency strategy
or solution must be initiated;
• Specific contingency strategies are documented against each scenario and explanation provided on
how each of these strategies will be executed;
• The lead person responsible for each strategy is identified; and finally
• The end plan triggers are listed against each strategy to determine when to deactivate a risk
contingency solution.
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10. Responsibilities:
The HMC Major Incident Planning Team is responsible for maintaining the corporate level emergency risk
management register.
The Major Incident Command Centre (MICC) in each HMC service is responsible to ensure a Covid-19 Risk
Management Plan and a Covid-19 Risk Management Contingency Plan is developed and maintained for
their service.
Members of the Corporate Quality and Safety Department are responsible to work in close collaboration
with the Senior Leaders or delegates in each service and provide technical assistance in risk identification,
risk management as well as risk management contingency planning for identified hazards with high
relative risks. This also includes analysis of incidents related to exposure of staff to Covid-19 to identify
trends and areas of focus for improvement.
Each service FMS committee will be responsible for maintaining emergency risk registers for their service,
and examining existing measures to protect patients and their staff from potential risk that may lead to
major incidents.
The decision when to activate and deactivate a risk contingency strategy will be made by the Service Major
Incident Command Center.
The Corporate Risk Management Crisis Team will have responsibility to support assessing the impact of
business interruptions in emergency situations, and support actions to mitigate identified risks in clsoe
collaboration with the leadership and management of the service affected.
11. Appendices:
1. Covid-19 Risk Control Assessment Checklist for HMC Services
2. Risk Management Plan for Covid-19
3. Hazard Vulnerability Analysis Tool
4. Covid-19 Risk Management Contingency Plan
12. References
• Hamad Medical Corporation Major Incident Program (MIP) Fundamental section (2018).
• HMC Interim Influenza Pandemic Preparedness & Response Program (2020).
• HMC Risk Management Strategic Program (2019).
• World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe (2020). Hospital Readiness Checklist for
Covide-19. Interim Version.
• US Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2020).
Comprehensive Hospital Preparedness Checklist for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Cvodi-19).
• Kaisar Permanente Medical Center Hazard and Vulnerability Analysis.
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Appendix 1. Covid-19 Risk Control Assessment Checklist for HMC Services
This checklist is used to enhance risk awareness at HMC services and inform service’s risk management
and preparedness to effectively respond to Covid-19 Pandemic.
1. Governance
Item Completed In Progress Not Started
1.1. The service has a Major Incident Management Plan which
also incorporates Covid-19 planning
☐ ☐ ☐
1.2. There is a governance structure existing for planning service
response and decision making during the Covid-19 pandemic
☐ ☐ ☐
1.3. The service has a written risk management plan with a focus
on Covid-19 planning and regularly updates the plan as the ☐ ☐ ☐
situation evolves
2. Human Resources
Item Completed In Progress Not Started
2.1. There is an established process for monitoring and managing
employees’ exposure to Covid-19 which also includes ☐ ☐ ☐
reporting OVAs against every individual exposure incident
2.2. The service has an estimate of the minimum number of
employees needed to ensure sufficient operation of the ☐ ☐ ☐
department
2.3. Employees’ absenteeism is regularly monitored ☐ ☐ ☐
2.4. Staffing needs are prioritized by unit or service and
personnel are distributed accordingly
☐ ☐ ☐
2.5. Personnel who will serve as backup have been identified and
trained on response objectives, priorities and policies
☐ ☐ ☐
2.6. Employees are trained and regularly updated on the
service’s evolving protocols to respond to Covid-19
☐ ☐ ☐
3. Communication
Item Completed In Progress Not Started
3.1. There is a streamlined mechanism of communication
between service administration, heads of departments and ☐ ☐ ☐
employees
3.2. An established process exists for reporting information from
employees to the service administration
☐ ☐ ☐
3.3. Patients triage and prioritization criteria have been
communicated to all the relevant employees
☐ ☐ ☐
3.4. All employees are briefed about their roles and
responsibilities within the service response action plan
☐ ☐ ☐
3.5. A defined mechanism exists to communicate with other
relevant services. This also includes developing a contact list
of all relevant services, government organizations, and
☐ ☐ ☐
corporate facilities to be easily accessible when needed
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3.6. Adequate information materials exists and utilized to
promote health amongst employees, patients and visitors
5. Surge Capacity
Item Completed In Progress Not Started
5.1. The service has a calculation of its maximum surge capacity ☐ ☐ ☐
5.2. Potential gaps in the provision of health care with emphasis
on critical care are identified and communicated with ☐ ☐ ☐
authorities
5.3. All nonessential services such as elective surgeries have been
cancelled.
☐ ☐ ☐
5.4. OPD visits and therapy sessions are restricted only to those
urgent, and where possible care is provided using
☐ ☐ ☐
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telemedicine including home delivery of pharmaceuticals
and other health materials.
5.5. Service’s admission and discharge criteria have been revised
to maximize service bed capacity
☐ ☐ ☐
7. Surveillance
Item Completed In Progress Not Started
7.1. There is an established process to regularly monitor
employees and existing patients for any suspicion of Covid- ☐ ☐ ☐
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7.2. All employees are aware of the need to report any suspicion
of Covid-19 and to lodge an OVA report when an employee ☐ ☐ ☐
exposure is confirmed
7.3. Reports of new suspected or confirmed Covid-19 cases
amongst employees and existing patients are investigated ☐ ☐ ☐
and traced to identify exposure of others to the disease
7.4. Employee’s exposure is promptly communicated to relevant
front-line clinicians and other co-workers
☐ ☐ ☐
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effective mechanisms in place to protect information
security
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Appendix 2. Risk Management Plan for Covid-19
Area Risk Identified Risk Risk Mitigation
Assessment
ID Domain Risk Who might be Initial Risk Mitigation Actions Residual Risk Alternative Responsible Time Status
Description harmed & how C L RS C L RS Actions Person Frame
1 Governance
2 HR
3 Communication
4 Infection
Control
5 Surge capacity
6 Continuity of
care
7 Surveillance
8 Equipment and
consumables
9 Information
Technology
10 Quality and
Safety
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Appendix 3. Hazard Vulnerability Analysis (HVA)
SEVERITY = (MAGNITUDE - MITIGATION)
PROBABILITY RISK
HUMAN PROPERTY BUSINESS PREPARED- INTERNAL EXTERNAL
IMPACT IMPACT IMPACT NESS RESPONSE RESPONSE
EVENT
Possibility of Physical Time, Community/
Likelihood this Interuption of
death or losses and Preplanning effectivness, Mutual Aid staff Relative threat*
will occur services
injury damages resouces and supplies
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
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Appendix 4. Covid-19 Risk Management Contingency Plan
No Risk % Trigger Point Planned actions How Responsible End Plan
Person Trigger
Hazard What is the % of What will cause What are your solutions to How are you going to implement Who is has the lead What is going to
scenario risk based on the scenario to deal with the scenario? these solutions? responsibility for this trigger the end of the
hazard vulnerability start? solution? contingency plan?
analysis?
1 e.g., field 62% Fire ignited in Transfer all patients The hospital mosque is Medical Director Bed capacity
hospital the field to hospital mosque reserved for bed becomes
damaged by fire hospital site emergencies during the available in the
Covid-19 Pandemic. hospital or
Consider: - Patient externally in
pathway another HMC
- IPC precautions hospital
- Equipment and supplies
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3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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