Talk with HIROC: preparing your healthcare facility for winter is good for the safety of staff, patients, and their families
Are you looking to start a conversation at your organization on how to mitigate your property risk?
That’s exactly what HIROC’s Jean Asuncion, Shahbaz Haque and their team are on a mission to do – Support HIROC Subscribers in starting a dialogue at your sites.
In a recent episode of Talk with HIROC, we sat down with our partners from FM Global to help you kick-start a dialogue with your team.
HIROC and FM Global work together, and risk management & safety are in our shared DNA.
This Talk with HIROC features the following experts:
- Shiva Nourmansouri, Account Engineer with FM Global
- Aly Hirjii, Operations Engineering Manager with FM Global
Shiva and Aly share some quick and easy steps you can take to secure your site for the colder months, as well as practical ways to shift your thinking for maximum safety. For example, how can “Murphy’s Law” help you protect your site against winter catastrophes?
FM Global’s Aly Hirjii says winter prep really comes down to three pillars.
- Prevention. On top of regular winter hazards, we now have to add COVID-19 to the equation. This has affected every hospital in the world to some extent. This means it’s even more important to protect your property, so you’re not dealing with two catastrophes at the same time. Get one step ahead of water and freeze damage before it happens.
- Reaction time. It’s important to have the right “action items” in place to minimize response time. Having sound physical protection, in combination with a proper emergency plan, will reduce the time it takes to respond in the event of a catastrophe. Aly says this is ultimately what’s best for the safety of staff, patients, and guests in your hospital.
- Resilience. A resilient hospital culture is important to preventing and managing problems. Aly says resilient hospitals understand risk better, and are more resourceful when it comes to preventing and managing it. Resilience begins at the top – he says in his experience, hospitals with leaders and executives who cultivate a culture of resiliency are most effective at keeping healthcare communities safe.
Tip: HIROC and FM Global have developed resources that use an evidence-based approach to help you prevent loss. These are available as part of your insurance program. Please reach out for more information - inquiries@hiroc.com
Next on the mic is Shiva. She says the main thing to watch out for is water and freeze damage – in fact, she says it’s one of the highest causes of loss in the healthcare sector as a whole.
“I mean, when you walk through a hospital, versus any other industry like an office building or a manufacturing plant, you really notice the high usage of water,” she says, “that means there’s a higher volume of pipes running through the hospitals as well. With all those pipes, the likelihood of having a pipe break increases, which could lead to loss.”
To make matters worse, Shiva says hospitals are generally older buildings.
How can we best prepare? Shiva had the following to offer:
- Keep your eye on the clock. Time is of the essence. Shiva even suggested thinking of loss on a line graph: as the minutes and hours go by with water damage in the building, how will that impact the safety of the hospital?
- Don’t just have a plan – be ready to roll. In Shiva’s words: “what good does having a plan do if it’s just sitting in a drawer?” she says you have to practice emergency drills with your team regularly, so your plan isn’t just a piece of paper.
- Remember Murphy’s Law. That is: “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Shiva says in her experience, a lot of loss is caused by things that have compiled on top of previous loss. For example: “let’s say you want to add temporary heaters because you’ve lost heat. You should also think about ‘will these temporary heaters cause a fire hazard?’ what can I do to minimize that risk of a fire from the temporary heaters?’”
- Make sure you have your contact list up to date. A point shared with Aly above. “So let’s say you experience a freeze in one of your buildings” says Shiva, “if you don’t know who to contact, who the person for that department is that has the authority to make decisions, then that response time starts to really increase and impact your hospital.”
Aly says when in doubt, we should ask ourselves: is safety paramount to my organization?
Tip: HIROC and FM Global have come together with freeze checklists and other emergency response plan templates. These are available for all our subscribers to use! Please get in touch with us for more information - inquiries@hiroc.com.
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- Innovation
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- Human factors
- Claims and legal perspective
- Communication and media relations
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By Julian Abraham, Communications and Marketing Associate, HIROC