If it's been a while since you've taken your crisis plan for a test drive, pull it out and evaluate its performance in addressing your hospital's risks and vulnerabilities, particularly during intense media scrutiny. Andrea Hecht of Hecht Communications in Sherman Oaks, Calif., specializing in hospital-based crisis management, offers these tips in revising your crisis communications plan:
1. Identify emergency communication team members from various areas of the hospital's executive management. In addition to the CEO and PR director, consider representatives from volunteer services, security and the medical staff.
2. Create an "early warning" system to alert team members to a pending crisis.
3. Review all previous media coverage about your hospital during the past year or two, including both crisis and regular coverage, to assess topics of interest and media trends in specific healthcare angles.
4. Review existing crisis communications policies and plans and determine how to improve them with "lessons learned" from your most recent crisis situations.
5. Identify who the hospital spokesperson(s) will be and make sure this person is media trained.
6. Assist the emergency communication team members with fully understanding the role of the spokesperson.
7. Create a series of two-way communication networks to reach strategic audiences in your hospital, such as employees, patients, board members and physicians.
Source: Andrea Hecht, Hecht Communications