For Immediate Release
July 14, 2016
SACRAMENTO - The California Association of Health Facilities has been awarded a national, Silver “Power of A Award” for 
development of a mobile Disaster Preparedness App to help nursing home administrators respond to an emergency by accessing critical information on their mobile devices. The award was presented to CAHF by the American Society of Association Executives, ASAE.
The Power of A Awards recognize a select number of organizations nationally that distinguish themselves with innovative, effective and broad reaching programs to enrich lives, create a competitive workforce, and drive innovation to make a better world.
“Congratulations to CAHF and its partners for their hard work and for helping to make the world a better place,” said Sharon J. Swan, CEO of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and chair of the Power of A Awards Judging Committee. “Their initiative exemplifies how associations are a positive force in our everyday lives – not just to the profession or industry they represent, but to society at large.”
The CAHF Disaster Preparedness App, developed and supported by IlluminAge Communication Partners of Seattle, WA, is free to any skilled nursing or intermediate care facility for the developmentally disabled (ICF-DD) in California. The app includes general emergency response information as well as facility-specific details to help employees at a skilled nursing facility prepare, respond and recover from a natural or man-made disaster.
“Many facility emergencies take place during off-hours, when critical staff is absent,” said Tom Medley, CAHF’s Disaster Preparedness Liaison. “The disaster app allows individual facilities to access their floor plans, utility shut-offs and emergency contact information from their mobile phones or iPads, at any hour of the day, even in the absence of Internet access.”
During a normal year, 350,000 seniors access services at skilled nursing centers in California. About 80 percent receive rehabilitation and physical therapy and return home or to a lower level of care. The rest of the population suffers from a variety of chronic medical conditions including a lack of mobility. Approximately half have some form of dementia. The disaster app is designed to help nursing home administrators respond to emergencies with the least possible disruption to facility services and care of medically-challenged residents.
The California Association of Health Facilities has been at the forefront of innovative disaster planning in the long-term care community, bringing much needed structure and disaster education to association members. In 2006, CAHF created the Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) to facilitate interactions between long-term care facilities and local disaster planning communities. The DPP then developed the Pandemic Workbook for Long-Term Care and, in 2009, the Model Respiratory Protection Program. Both were the first of their kind to be written specifically for long-term care. These instruction manuals include worksheets and specific tools and recommendations that providers can put into practice immediately.
In 2010, building on the work of the Florida Health Care Association (FHCA), the CAHF Disaster Preparedness Program developed the Nursing Home Incident Command System (NHICS) Manual and Train-the-Trainer Program as a method of organizing and coordinating emergency efforts in the long-term care community.
The Nursing Home Incident Command System is based on the national Incident Command System (NICS), which was developed by fire chiefs in the 1960s. NICS is the national model for command structures at fires, crime scenes and major events. This specific organized structure, with a set of policies, procedures and job functions is designed to give multiple agencies a standard response during an emergency.
CAHFs Disaster Preparedness Program has partnered with its national affiliate, the American Health Care Association to distribute NHICS training protocols to its members and the 1.3 million nursing home residents in their care. The program is also available free of charge on the CAHF Disaster Preparedness website.
About 170 facilities are presently using the CAHF Disaster Preparedness App, meaning 17,000 nursing home residents are under the care of nursing home leaders who have disaster planning/response resources at their fingertips. In June, 2016, the app was also recognized by California’s Emergency Preparedness Office.
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