Integrating fire alarms and mass notification systems If you shoulder the responsibilities of emergency preparedness and response, you likely know layered mass notifications — the ability to deliver instant and relevant information to multiple audiences, wherever they are — is critical to keep people and property safe during a crisis. And yet, many organizations risk…
Company Overview Southern Ohio Medical Center (SOMC) is a 222-bed 501(C)(3) not-for-profit hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio, providing emergency and surgical care, as well as a wide range of healthcare services. Since 1954, it has been their mission to make a true difference in the lives of patients, employees, and the surrounding community. As a rural…
For more than 140 years, sight- and hearing-impaired children from birth to age 21 have attended the Colorado School for The Deaf and The Blind (CSDB), a state-funded facility serving communities throughout Colorado. Some time ago, CSDB came to us with the concern that they needed a way to reach every single student and staff…
If you’re anything like your typical consumer, you rarely go many minutes without checking a web-enabled device to manage your life — whether for work, play, or family life. Do you ever think about how to leverage your audience’s screen addiction (and the technologies that make that possible) to enhance your mass and emergency communications?…
You might have noticed a spike in emergency preparedness activities and investment by colleges and universities in the last year or two. It’s not surprising: History has taught us that skimping on emergency preparedness comes at a tremendous cost to an organization’s operations, finances and reputation, not to mention lives — real people, impacted forever…
Just a few days ago, Campus Safety released the results of its 2017 Emergency Notification Survey. Respondents included more than 1,000 security professionals from the healthcare and education realms, sharing challenges and successes they’ve experienced with mass notifications. Just over half of respondents (51%) are planning or considering the purchase of notification solutions in the…
Know what’s worse than having a large-scale emergency in your hands? It’s botching your emergency communications. Remember the Gatlinburg wildfires last fall? WATE 6, the local ABC station, reported on the massive communications failure that followed, when orders to evacuate failed to reach recipients’ mobile devices. Brenda Reimer, a Gatlinburg resident, recalls two firemen knocking…
Violence in healthcare settings is underreported and growing, warns the Joint Commission. The accreditation body, which audits healthcare providers’ compliance with regulatory mandates, recently updated an alert it first issued in 2010 on preventing violence in healthcare settings. In that alert, the Joint Commission highlighted top failures by healthcare providers that contributed to violent incidents…
For more than 140 years, sight- and hearing-impaired children from birth to age 21 have attended the Colorado School for The Deaf and The Blind (CSDB), a state-funded facility serving communities throughout Colorado. Some time ago, CSDB came to us with the concern that they needed a way to reach every single student and…
Check social media any day of the week, and you’ll find hordes of customers praising or condemning an organization for how they responded to a crisis. And for good reason: How a company communicates when people are at risk can make the difference between life and death, hero and foe, profit and loss. When facing…