Speaker 1: I was just telling the rest of the group, thank you-all for coming and put your information in the chat and communicate with each other regarding anything, especially covering clients. I really love for you-all to make sure you do everything you can to cover the clients that need help. I'm going to go ahead and get started. This week, I've decided to talk about emergency preparedness in home care. You-all have an emergency plan. If you have a license with the state of North Carolina, you have an emergency plan in your policy. I just mentioned that you-all have the policy because when they approve you for a license, you had to have that policy there. Now, some of you have been in business for a very long time, and so your policies may not be all the way up to date for everything that you need right now. So go back in there, look, be sure it's up to date. And if they haven't come to do a survey, you may not have everything there. But those of you that have been licensed within the last, since 2018, your emergency plan is probably up to date. It is a policy that you have. The main thing that we should always keep in mind is that we should follow our policy. That's the one thing that they look at when they come for a survey. Of course, there's certain things that are supposed to be in your policy, but the main thing they're going to do is look to see if your agency is following the policy. So your emergency plan is there to alleviate life-threatening situations for your clients, to stabilize your clients if they have a condition, and to ensure client safety. So the policy should somehow state that the agency director and staff members will implement emergency actions for clients in crisis as appropriate. And of course, as appropriate means whatever that client's condition is, you will do something to make sure that they're safe. Now, keep in mind, if you have a home care license, you are a health care facility. And you're just not a little, you might consider yourself a little agency that's out here operating, but you are considered a licensed health care facility. You may not have as many clients as some of the nursing facilities or hospitals, but you're operating on some of those same principles. So I think we always talk about or remember that we should respond in a medical emergency. And I just put a few things up here. If the client has severe pain that is abnormal, we know that that would be an emergency. If they fall, any type of fall, you probably wanna get that client checked out because you don't know if they have broken something. Fainting, that's an emergency. If they fracture something, a burn, a bleed, and there's probably many others that you can think of. And so I just thought of when I was running my agency, I gave my aides some autonomy as far as this type of emergency. I told them if things like this, pain, falls, burns, bleeding, if that happened while you were in the home, you have my authority to go ahead and activate EMS or call 911. Because by the time you catch up with me, I may answer the phone or another nurse may answer the phone but what if we don't? And one caveat I gave them is that if you feel like you would call EMS for your mother or sister or your child, then call EMS for that client that you're working with. So you all might need to go over that with your aides because they're right there, they know that client. They know that if they showed up this morning, Ms. Jones is in severe pain and this is a pain she never had before, they know the changes because they have a baseline with that client that you may not have as a nurse or an agency director. So medical emergencies, we're good on those. Now in your policies, there should be something in there that refers to all of these. If there's severe pain, what do you do? If there's a fall, what do you do? So just check out your policies and be sure that everything is there. As far as natural disasters, hurricanes, we've had hurricanes come in off of the Atlantic and come right in here through Raleigh and Charlotte. We certainly have had tornadoes. We've had winter storms. This year we haven't had any, but we did have some extremely cold weather in December where some people lost power. We've had snow and ice. There's parts of Eastern North Carolina that are flooded and there's some areas here in Raleigh that may flood that are near Crabtree Creek or other areas. And then there's the pandemic. We never expected that to come, but we've dealt with that and we're still dealing with that. You need to have a pandemic policy in your emergency plan. That was something that we didn't have to have prior to 2020, but now as we do policies, there has to be a pandemic plan in there. So as I said, some of you that have been licensed for a very long time, you may not have that, but make sure that you get one in there to address what you do in case of a pandemic. And then there's the man-made disasters, a biological attack, chemical, nuclear. And I also put the pandemic back down here for man-made because we don't know where a pandemic comes from. So I put it in both areas. There's bomb threats. And then I added today a train derailment. Many of us live near railroad tracks and what if a train derailed near our house or near our client's house, then that would be a disaster. We have one going on right now in Ohio. So that's something that we need to be aware of. Now, as far as natural disasters, we have such good weather reporting now. We have all these satellite systems and we have great meteorologists here in the Raleigh area. When there is potential for things like hurricanes, tornadoes, and winter storms, they will forecast that as best they can. Now, as an agency, that gives you the opportunity to get to your clients and make sure they're ready. If you know that someone has a ventilator or they're on oxygen, you make sure that they have arrangements made in case the power goes out tomorrow night, whether it be a tornado or ice or whatever. So weather forecasting is important that you pay attention to that because you can get ahead of some of these natural disasters because a lot of the times they're forecast. Now, as far as a medical emergency, maybe you can't get ahead of that or a man-made disaster, it just happens and it's there. So as an agency, agency director, just keep in mind that you are responsible for those individuals. The last thing that you want to happen is for, say an ice or snow storm comes, you have a client on oxygen, their power goes out for two days, they had no arrangements made. They end up in the hospital or God forbid they pass away and someone looks into it and they're like, well, they had a home care agency. It seems that someone would have checked in with the family or if they don't have family living with them, someone would have made sure they went to a shelter or whatever. So just make sure you're thinking about that and what is your ultimate responsibility. As agency owners, you're responsible for your employees as well. Most of our aides live near the clients. So if the client's power is out, your aide's power may be out as well. So you need to check on them to see if you can possibly help them and be reasonable and a good manager and not expect them to go out in extreme weather and leave their families and have potential for getting hurt. That's just a judgment call that I know you all can make, but I just thought I would mention that anyway. So every home care agency, as I said before, you should have an emergency plan policy. And I went over a little bit of that. I went to find some resources today and the North Carolina Department of Public Safety has a family emergency plan form. It has a lot of good things on there that you should use for yourself as well as your clients. Where will you go? What will you do? It's very good. So I have a link here to that. And then this information also came off of their site where they said you should have phone numbers or a contact person or family members have that available. If you got separated from your family or your client got separated from their family, they need to have a plan as to where will they meet if they get separated. And then the potential shelters, this website, ReadyNC, I looked at that. And if there are shelters, they will put those shelters up on that site in real time so that the person will know what's close to their house. And we've heard some real disasters about pets. You all remember when Hurricane Katrina came and New Orleans was flooded, there were pets everywhere that no one ever claimed. It also happened in Eastern North Carolina when I think when Floyd came, there were all of these pets that were displaced. So then they need to think about what will they do with their pet? Most people just abandoned their pet because they weren't prepared. So they were trying to save themselves. So that's a plan that they need to think about. And if you had to stay in your home, if you had to be in place in your home, how would you stay safe? Do you have a generator? Do you have enough food? Do you have your medicine? All of those things are relevant. And I highlighted this one because it says how to help older adults or those with functional needs in the home. That is us. Those are the people we take care of. So we really need to make sure, you can't do everything, y'all. You can't do it all. But just thinking ahead, contacting those families that you know may need a little bit of extra assistance or may need to know where the shelter is ahead of time, if you can. And then if something happens, a train derailment or biological attack or whatever, you respond as best you can. And then as always, if you are responding to something like that, you document that. If you can, document it in the client's record that you call Ms. Jones' daughter because you know she has oxygen and the power may be out for two or three days and you want to be sure that they have gotten to a safe place. You told them about the shelter down on the Smith Street. Document as much as you can. It may be later on, but it's always good to document what you did because if you don't document it, then we know it's not done. Again, I'd like to let you all know, I'm happy to provide this information for you, but do not change your policies. Do not do anything legal with your records until you check with the authorities that govern that area of your business. And so that's what I have prepared for you all today. What I'd like to do now is give you all an opportunity to speak or ask questions about anything that I went over today first. And then if there are other questions that you have on things that aren't relevant to what I talked about today, I'll try to address those as well. Do we have any questions? You can open your mic if you do, and we'll discuss it. Okay. Well, I hope that you all will go into your policies, review them, make sure that you know what's in there because you are gonna be held accountable for what's in your policies. And then if you need to make a change, make that change and utilize your aides to help in case of an emergency. If they are okay, make sure they help. They can help to call the client and report back to you so that you have a lot of help out there to get this done. But emergency planning is really, really important. And I just wanna be sure it's something that you keep in mind all the time with everything that goes on and just anything can happen at any time. If there are no questions, I thank you all for coming today. I will put this video up on the YouTube channel sometime next week. And if you have questions about anything, you all have my information, feel free to contact me. All right, you all have a good week and a good month, and I will be in touch with you all next month with a new topic. And until then, you all stay safe and take care. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.