Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5, issued on February 28, 2003 by President George Bush mandated the use of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) as a comprehensive, national approach to managing emergency incidents at all
jurisdictional levels and for all disciplines, including hospitals. Hospitals looked at these new requirements, and some still do, as the Federal Government piling on
additional regulations to their already bountiful list.

Initially, many healthcare organizations thought that by taking the NIMS training courses: ICS 100, Introduction to the Incident Command System; ICS 200, Incident Command System for Single Resource and Initial Action Incidents; IS 700, National
Incident Management System; and, IS 800 National Response Plan (now titled National Response Framework) automatically made them NIMS compliant. Time has told otherwise.

With changes to the Joint Commission Standards, though the Joint Commissions states they do not require their accredited organizations to be NIMS compliant, there became a
connectivity between the two sets of structures.

This session will demonstrate that connectivity and show the direct relationships between the two criteria, thus meeting one requirement will meet the other. Over the past few years, healthcare organizations have used extensive amounts of their Federal Hospital Preparedness Program Grant funds to hire companies to make them NIMS compliant when they were all along.