Where is your department’s crisis communications plan? Could you put your hands on it within five minutes? When was it last updated? If your answers to these questions weren’t exactly reassuring, you’re not alone.
In today's fast-paced and ever-changing world, it's more important than ever to be prepared for crises that can strike at any moment. Hospitals and health care facilities, in particular, must be equipped with a clear and easily accessible crisis communications plan that is regularly updated and readily available to all stakeholders.
Unfortunately, many hospitals’ marketing and communications departments are unsure of where their crisis communications plans are located, or when they were last updated. This lack of preparedness can have serious consequences, not only for the hospital's ability to respond effectively to crises, but also for its accreditation status and ability to receive reimbursement for services provided.
According to Ashley Johnson, a communications strategist with Ten Adams, a crisis communications plan is one of the most critical documents that hospital marketing and communications departments own. "If you want to maintain your accreditation, their standards require the use of an emergency management program," she notes. "You have to have a crisis communications plan and have thought through how you are going to talk to the external community and the internal community."
Ms. Johnson emphasizes that a crisis communications plan must be regularly updated to ensure that it is current and effective. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many hospital communications teams found themselves too busy responding to the crisis to update their plans. As a result, they were forced to rely on ad-hoc measures to communicate with stakeholders, which can lead to confusion, misinformation, and a lack of consistency in messaging.
To avoid this, hospitals must ensure that their crisis communications plans are up-to-date and readily available to all stakeholders. This requires a concerted effort on the part of hospital marketing and communications departments, including defining roles and responsibilities, creating a resource tool kit that is easily usable, establishing a "quick-start guide," and implementing a training program to work through the plan.
Ms. Morris’ team reached out to Ten Adams for help creating such a plan, and they identified several key principles:
1. Define roles and responsibilities. To prepare for a crisis, it is important to define four general roles and responsibilities, rather than preassigning people to specific tasks. These roles include an incident command/public information officer, public relations coordinator, digital lead, and marketing/creative lead.
2. Develop a resource tool kit that is easily usable. Creating an easily usable resource tool kit is crucial in the first 30 seconds of a crisis. Simple documents in Microsoft Word are recommended, including spreadsheets for tracking media requests, packing lists for the media center, and a list of most likely crisis events by facility.
3. Create a "quick-start guide.” A quick-start guide should be developed with 1-2-3 quick-start instructions that are easy to understand and follow. The guide should include a list of roles to be activated immediately in a crisis, ideally with at least three people per role and their cellphone numbers.
4. Establish a training program to work through your plan. Establishing a training program to work through the plan is also essential. For accredited hospitals, the crisis and emergency operations plan should be practiced annually, while the internal communications and marketing team should have a separate practice at least once a year. This should involve reviewing and updating the plan, including phone numbers, and reviewing how the plan is accessed.