What is a Code Black in a Hospital?
Understanding Hospital Emergency Codes
After tragedy at a hospital when the wrong code was called, The Hospital Association of South Carolina (HASC) pushed to have hospital codes standardized. In Canada, Code Black in a hospital indicates a bomb threat or that a suspicious object has been discovered.
Hospitals face many potentially life threatening situations for which they must stay constantly prepared. These aren’t just limited to a medical emergency, and each situation is assigned its own standardized color code to be communicated via the hospital public address system, pagers, and phone trees. For example:
-
Active shooter (Code Silver)
-
Mass casualties (Code Orange)
-
Bomb threat (Code Black)
-
Child abduction (Code Amber)
-
Missing patient (Code Yellow)
The Need for Code Black Hospital Bomb Threat Procedures
As mentioned above, a Code Black in the hospital indicates a bomb threat: a delicate situation that must be handled precisely and swiftly communicate. A hospital code black doesn’t leave you time to manually call staff and emergency services; you need to be ready to respond and begin lockdowns and evacuation in a matter of seconds. You must also be aware of patients with specific needs, such as those in intensive care.
Consider the size of a hospital and the number of people who pass through it every day. Imagine the chaos that would result if an announcement was made without thorough bomb threat procedures already in place. Very likely there would be panic, trampling, and multiple casualties as a result.
Rather than place this burden on your hospital staff, your patients, and their visitors, SimplyCast offers an elegant solution: the Code Black hospital use case.
Concerned About a Bomb Threat in Hospital? Elevate and Automate
Hyperautomation is the act of automating every possible task within a process—in this case, communication. Instead of contacting staff and neighboring hospitals manually, our tools equip hospitals with split-second outreach in the event of a code black bomb threat. With our use case solution, hospitals can shave precious time off their bomb threat procedures, meaning staff can focus their skillsets fully on the emergency at hand.
Our tools include:
-
A fully customizable, centralized dashboard.
-
Control your alerts and monitor real-time updates from civilians, your staff, and emergency responders.
-
Modify your alerts in seconds to keep your information accurate, e.g. in the event of blocked areas or dangerous locations.
-
Communicate as necessary with stakeholders and other key personnel, such as neighboring hospital staff and emergency responders.
-
Once the bomb threat has been resolved, your dashboard will generate an automatic record of your response, allowing you to see where improvements can be made.
-
-
Automatic alert software. Simply template your code black bomb threat alerts, schedule them, and customize them as necessary. Launch your bomb threat procedures with the click of a button, and ensure your instructions and communications are calm, consistent, and thorough.
-
Check the status and resources of neighboring hospitals (such as additional ambulances, backup medical supplies, and equipment and beds for babies and/or intensive care patients), or seek real-time updates from staff, civilians, and emergency personnel with our live survey feature. Monitor responses as they come in and adjust your bomb threat procedures accordingly.
How to Automate Code Black in the Hospital:
With this framework for a seamless bomb threat response, you can break your response to a code black in the hospital down to just four easy steps.
Step 1: Create a Hospital Staff Database
Preparedness is the foundation of successful bomb threat procedures.
To ensure our Code Black hospital use case functions with its full efficiency, we highly recommend having your administration staff keep a record of all your hospital staff’s up to date information (such as name, phone number, etc.) in a central contact database. This way, if a suspicious package is found, you will be able to alert the necessary staff with the press of a button and mobilize them immediately.
Step 2: Prepare Alert Message Templates
The next step to your Code Black hospital response is creating a set of alert message templates that can be deployed at a moment’s notice. Save time and keep your messages calm, consistent, clear, and concise.
Emergencies can vary, so we advise creating a few different alert templates to suit every outcome. Remember to include templates for a medical emergency or a blocked passageway, as well as a final “all clear” for the resolution of the bomb threat.
For best results, make sure each alert contains all the necessary information, such as gathering locations for staff and patients, where backup evacuation zones are if the usual routes are blocked or unsafe, areas of the hospital that are off-limits for safety, and any precautionary measures that should be taken.
Step 3: Mobilize Staff
Your staff are now prepared to react immediately in the event of a Code Black in the hospital.
- If a suspicious package is discovered or a credible threat is made, your administration team can instantly notify staff and stakeholders over multiple communication channels (such as email, SMS, and by phone) with the press of a button, meaning your staff can get themselves, your patients, and visitors to safety.
-
During this phase, your administration staff might also trigger live surveys: a real-time data-gathering feature that will allow you to secure locations for intensive care patients.
-
Hospital staff who receive the code black alert should begin evacuation protocol and send status updates whenever they finish evacuating their designated areas. This might include head counts for administrators to check against their records.
-
Administration staff should monitor these responses via the command hub and can adapt their tactics in real time to stay one step ahead of the situation. Good communication in a crisis is key.
-
Once the bomb threat has been investigated, administration staff can send another notification to inform all staff and shareholders that the situation has been resolved. They should also inform the hospitals housing their critical care patients that it is safe for them to return.
Step 4: Review Responsiveness Report
The digital emergency response solution will automatically generate a report with everything you need to know about the code black event, such as the alerts that were sent, the open rate, click-through rate, and who acknowledged the alerts and when.
These reports will help you measure the effectiveness of your bomb threat procedures and provide you with helpful insights into where you can improve, ensuring your team can be ready no matter what.
Curious about the effectiveness of your code black bomb threat procedures?
SimplyCast provides scalable software that is fully customizable to meet any hospital’s requirements. Reach out today about our contact management and mass notification tools to see if they’re right for you. Why not book a one-on-one demo with an experienced member of our team, so you can have absolute confidence when calling a code? Just click the button below to get in touch.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what SimplyCast’s tools can do in another type of emergency, check out our other blogs; we cover a vast range of color code emergencies within the hospital code system (such as code red for fire, code blue for cardiac, and code orange for mass casualty emergencies), and even non-emergency hospital solutions such as bed management.
Why SimplyCast?
SimplyCast is an ISO 27001:2013-certified company with data centers in the USA and Canada. Our secure server provides a 99.5% minimum uptime, protects your confidential data, and encrypts any messages you transmit with our system.
The SimplyCast platform has the capacity to send 100,000+ messages every hour and allows 10,000+ concurrent sessions, as well as the freedom to acquire additional gateways and servers as needed.
Our fully scalable, no-code technology keeps you in control, allowing full customization of our services even without coding experience.
With our solution, you have peace of mind.
