Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
It is required by law for all healthcare facilities to have a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan in place that incorporates an all-hazards approach and includes all potential disasters that a facility may experience. It is also vital that healthcare facilities practice their emergency responses, including full building evacuations, to ensure that in a real life emergency situation, the facility can execute with little to no risk to patients.
A caller phoned an Independence, Missouri, assisted living and rehabilitation facility and warned that the facility only had only a few minutes to evacuate before a bomb was set to detonate. This threat posed a special challenge for the assisted living and rehabilitation center and forced hundreds of the facility’s residents to flee their homes-some of them bed-ridden and requiring the assistance of ambulance services. The evacuation process also required vans and buses to move the residents to safety.
Many family members rushed to the facility concerned for their loved ones after finding out about the evacuation on social media.
The facility is quite large and required more than two hours of searching before the police could be sure that there was no bomb and it was safe for the residents to return.
The residents were evacuated to another similar facility that was nearby, and it is not known who would want to create such a disturbance or why. Although the residents were able to be safely evacuated, it was not without risk. Some of the residents have critical medical issues that involve special care and handling, and this only added to the stress that the residents were experiencing due to the urgent aspect of such an evacuation. Nurses and staff from the neighboring facility helped with the evacuation; and fortunately, there was no loss of life attributable to the false bomb scare and evacuation.
Police are investigating to try and find out who might have made the bomb threat. It should be noted that like most states, making a false bomb report in Missouri is a class D felony, which is punishable by up to 4 years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
