Strengthening infrastructure
investments and emergency readiness
If you ask a professional in crisis and emergency management for a single takeaway from their experiences, their answer is likely to be this: If you wait for a disruptive event to happen before taking action, you’re already behind. This philosophy that has guided HCA Healthcare’s leadership and decision-making for decades. Our Enterprise Emergency Operations Group works tirelessly year-round to prepare for when they are needed most, ready to show up for our colleagues and communities when disaster strikes.
Aligning emergency response, physical security and facility management teams
In 2025, organizational realignments brought HCA Healthcare’s established security services, emergency management and business continuity teams together under one shared organization, the Enterprise Emergency Operations Group (EEOG) within the Office of the HCA Healthcare Chief Operations Officer. The shift acknowledged the natural overlap between the teams’ goals, capabilities and outcomes, and aims to enhance integration and collaboration across the intelligence, readiness and response phases within a unified leadership structure.
In one area of transformation, the former Physical Security Operations Center (PSOC), given an expanded scope and integrated into existing operational capabilities of the EEOG, transitioned into the new Risk Information & Intelligence Center (RIIC). The RIIC operates as a proactive, all-hazards watch and warning center, enabling greater situational awareness, threat detection and alerting, and decision-making enterprise wide.
Preparing to provide care continuity
when it matters most
The efforts of the EEOG throughout the year – to mitigate the risk of and prepare for countless potential incidents – are critical to the success of our response and recovery operations. From technical downtime to natural disasters, HCA Healthcare’s RIIC proactively monitors for and evaluates risks, identifies potential disruptions to our continuity of care, and shares information with leaders across the organization as actionable insights. By combining real-time situational awareness with decades of combined experience of our emergency operations team, we are able to continuously develop critical processes and protocols for potential implementation and help better prepare our colleagues in the field.
Several years ago, the EEOG’s Emergency Management Division developed a proprietary internal dashboard for tracking and measuring facility preparedness at our acute care hospitals. Now, our facility emergency management platform tracks 144 individual key readiness metrics, used to create an overall composite score, which allows emergency operations leads to quickly identify needs at a facility and compare their progress to enterprise benchmarks. When engaging with facility leadership, the metrics and benchmarks help inform business decisions, such as training opportunities, resource allocation and facility budgets.
Since the dashboard launched in 2023, HCA Healthcare’s Northern Virginia market has achieved a double digit increase in its composite score on the readiness dashboard. Keith Morrison, market director of emergency operations, uses the tool daily. “We take those metrics, and we create a goal. By meeting that goal, we can be a more resilient company in times of disaster or even day-to-day functions.” Morrison works with each facility’s emergency manager or operations director to choose impactful focus areas and create actionable steps to reach the next benchmark.
We take those metrics, and we create a goal. By meeting that goal, we can be a more resilient company in times of disaster or even day-to-day functions.
Keith Morrison,
Market Director of Emergency Operations and Preparedness
Responding to emergencies in
our communities
When an emergency event occurs on a local level, HCA Healthcare divisions and facilities benefit not only from the breadth of resources available within our network, but also from the comprehensive response plans and continued support from HCA Healthcare’s Enterprise Emergency Operations Center (EEOC). When activated, the EEOC, a multidisciplinary team of nearly 200 colleagues trained to respond in times of crisis, operates out of HCA Healthcare’s Nashville, Tennessee headquarters, bringing together senior leaders and expert colleagues to coordinate response efforts, direct resources where needed, monitor situational changes and streamline joint decision-making.
After wildfires threatened HCA Healthcare facilities on both coasts in early 2025, the EEOG’s Emergency Management Division focused on improving our enterprise response to these types of incidents. Through an expanded contract with one of our external vendors, our facilities now have more access to fire-fighting equipment and personnel when needed, as well as access to consultations with wildfire preparation experts who conduct facility walk-throughs and create actionable readiness plans. These experts study historical wildfire data to look for patterns in the behavior and spread of past wildfires, including influences such as wind and weather conditions, terrain and more.
Enterprise Response Teams
Since 2020, HCA Healthcare has prioritized strengthening and expanding our Enterprise Response Teams (ERTs). Our ERTs are made up of corporate, division and hospital-based clinicians, leaders and executives from numerous states across our organization who are cross-trained as incident response personnel. Members train throughout the year to respond to any event that impacts patient care or colleague well-being. Several Specialty Response Teams have been formed with experts in key areas, such as Neonatal Intensive Care Transport teams, Physician Response teams, Engineering Response teams and Enterprise Downtime Response specialists.
In 2025, the EEOG worked diligently to recruit, plan for and train volunteers for four additional response teams set to launch in 2026 – a Nursing team, a Supply Chain team, a Behavioral Health Response team and regionally-based Infectious Disease Response teams.
How we respond
January:
Richmond’s first winter storm of the year, causing widespread power outages and a malfunction in the city’s reservoir system, left much of central Virginia with a shortage of running water. Our facilities in the HCA Virginia Health system needed over 400,000 gallons of water a day to remain operational, which HCA Healthcare brought in using 15 tanker trunks and distributed using temporary pumping systems and generators.
April:
When officials at the Alaska Volcano Observatory announced an increased likelihood of eruption at Mount Spurr near Anchorage, our teams helped Alaska Regional Hospital secure the people and supplies needed to serve the community. In addition to hospital essentials like linens and scrubs, the facility stocked up on masks, shoe covers and goggles that would be needed if the air filled with ash and smoke. Two Enterprise Response Team members were deployed to Alaska to help with facility preparation, applying lessons learned from past emergency responses and year-round training sessions.
August:
As a leading provider of healthcare services, HCA Healthcare’s impact reaches far beyond the communities we serve. Just two days into a new school year, the community in Minneapolis, Minnesota experienced a horrific loss when the Annunciation Church and Catholic School was targeted in a mass shooting. The pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school’s students and teachers were gathered together during the attack in which two children were killed and 18 other people were injured. Though the nearest HCA Healthcare facility is hundreds of miles away, Hennepin Healthcare, the Level I Trauma Center where several victims were treated, reached out for support. In addition to support from our enterprise teams, the team of beloved therapy dogs from Methodist Healthcare in San Antonio, Texas, Fresca, Lady and Chanel, traveled to Minnesota to spread love and comfort.
October:
On an early fall morning in Tennessee, an explosion at a munitions manufacturing plant near TriStar Horizon Medical Center echoed for miles with the blast injuring passersby on a nearby highway. Our corporate team used the emergency readiness dashboard to predict potential needs and worked with supply chain teams to reroute supplies for treating burns to the facility. As the situation developed, facility leaders were free to focus on staff support and patient care, knowing they had support working alongside them across the enterprise.