Book Review: Healthcare Emergency Incident Management

​Healthcare Emergency Incident Management Operations Guide. By Jan Glarum. Published by Butterworth-Heinemann. www.Elsevier.com. 106 pages. $59.95.

An exceptional resource for professionals who manage healthcare emergencies, Healthcare Emergency Incident Management Operations Guide is also a great reference for security professionals in other industries.

Over the years, many healthcare organizations have used the incident management protocols of the California Emergency Medical Services Authority's Hospital Emergency Incident Command System, as well as the U.S. National Incident Management System. Both have good parts to them, so many organizations will at least use them for a baseline as they develop their own internal emergency management system.

Author Jan Glarum begins with the history of the incident command systems and goes on to explain the pros and cons of each. He also gives readers a sense of where they should go when developing their own plans and what they should look like.

The wide-ranging collection of information is easy to read and accessible, even for the novice healthcare security or emergency management professional. Examples of managing and evaluating the effectiveness of an emergency management program add value, as do the charts and illustrations throughout the guide. Almost a dozen examples of forms offer a template that readers can use to develop their own forms. 

Those looking for a healthcare emergency management guide to develop—or refine—an existing program will find this book to be a good starting point.

Reviewer: John M. White, CPP, is president and CEO of Protection Management, LLC. An honorably retired law enforcement officer with more than 40 years of protection experience, he is a published author and serves on the ASIS Healthcare Security Council.