Student Poster Presentation - University of Iowa QI Symposium

By: Jordan Brelje

On Wednesday, April 6, a group of University of Iowa MHA students presented their poster, “A real-time, customizable, Hazard Vulnerability Analysis tool for use during Hospital Incident Command System activations,” at the fourth annual University of Iowa Quality Improvement Symposium. The poster described a semester-long project that the students (Jordan Brelje, Aaron Horsfield, Anna Saxon and Cory Stetson) have been working on as part of a Hospital Organization and Management course. Students enrolled in the course have the opportunity to engage in meaningful consulting projects for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC). The team’s project came about after the need for a real-time hazard analysis tool became evident during a recent hospital incident command system (HICS) exercise. In addressing this need, the team developed an Excel-based tool which allows users to compare the institutional threat of multiple hazards in real time.

The real-time analysis tool is designed to help prioritize hazards which occur simultaneously and allows the user to analyze a maximum of six hazards across a determined time span. While the framework provides the user with three basic measurements for each hazard – severity, predictability, and business continuity – additional measurement criteria may be added in the event that the user wishes to consider other factors in an individual hazard’s threat to the organization. Once the appropriate measurement criteria have been established, the user must rate each measurement for an individual hazard on a scale from 1-5, with a 5 rating holding the most weight. Users can then prioritize hazards based upon their identified threat to the institution and can design organizational responses accordingly.

Preliminary testing of the student’s real-time hazard vulnerability analysis tool has produced favorable results, and the tool will be formally tested during UIHC’s upcoming HICS exercise.