Emergency Management chapter fully revised for nursing care centers

Effective Jan. 1, 2025, a fully revised Emergency Management (EM) chapter has been approved for all Joint Commission-accredited nursing care centers. The Joint Commission thoroughly analyzed and rewrote the EM chapter, which resulted in reorganized requirements, renumbered standards, and reduced elements of performance (EPs) by more than 28% for nursing care centers.

The goal of the EM chapter rewrite was to help health care organizations to develop more comprehensive EM programs and to better prepare for the health, safety, and security needs of their facilities, staff, patient and resident populations, and communities during emergencies or disasters (such as a natural disaster, cybersecurity attack, high-consequence infectious disease, or special pathogen).

The new and revised EM requirements clarify and emphasize the following:

• Assessment, applicability, and incorporation of the hazard vulnerability analysis throughout the EM chapter
• Leadership involvement and oversight in all aspects of the EM program
• Staff education and training, with specific guidance for initial and ongoing EM training

The project’s program-specific R³ Report provides rationales for the requirements as well as references to the research articles and reports used to develop them. In addition to an extensive literature review, the new and revised requirements were developed based on voice-of-accredited organization feedback resulting from the pandemic, public field review, expert guidance from a standards review panel, and an internal Joint Commission EM workgroup.

The new and revised requirements will be posted on the Prepublication Standards page of The Joint Commission’s website and will publish online in the fall 2024 E-dition^® update to the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Nursing Care Centers (CAMNCC). For those who purchase it, the PDF version of the 2025 CAMNCC will include these new and revised requirements.

For more information, contact the Joint Commission’s Standards and Survey Methods.