About Us

Throughout the United States, critical incidents have reinforced the importance of practical fire and emergency management programs for healthcare facilities. Fires, earthquakes, floods and other disasters have devastated many facilities. The reality in healthcare is that the patients are dependent upon staff to protect them from life-threatening situations.

Russell Phillips & Associates services only healthcare facilities, thus concentrating all of our efforts on ensuring that the highest level of safety is achieved for our clients. With our understanding of how regulations and standards impact a facility and their patients/residents, we are able to bring a unique expertise to all of our projects. Furthermore, our investigations of fires and other disasters throughout the United States and Canada have enabled us to apply best practices, and work with clients to reduce the cost of compliance. Our programs are designed to meet requirements of accreditation and regulatory agencies such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), Department of Health, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Some of our investigations and research include:

• Reviewing hundreds of healthcare fires, including Operating Room fires and fires involving the loss of patient/resident lives, to determine effective staff responses.

• Operating under the auspices of the NFPA in Houston, Texas, to review the effectiveness of healthcare disaster plans during the floods of Tropical Storm Allison, June 2001.

• Visiting New York City to analyze the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on healthcare facilities and their staff.

• Analyzing the 2004 hurricanes in the southeast to assess full evacuation strategies and learn from recovery plan successes and failures.

The facilities we serve include:

• National & Regional Health Systems

• Hospitals (Acute Care, Rehabilitation, and Psychiatric)

• Long-term Care (Nursing Homes, Transitional Care, Assisted Living, Senior Independent Living)

• Ambulatory Centers (Surgery, Radiology, Clinics, and Medical Office Buildings)

We have been invited to become members of national committees that influence standards for fire, code compliance and emergency management. This has assisted us in preparing our clients for changes in standards and interpretations and how they will impact their healthcare facility in the future. Some of these committees include:

• JCAHO Committee on Healthcare Safety (Emergency Management Advisor).

• NFPA 99-12®, Healthcare Emergency Management Technical Committee (Committee Chairman).

• NFPA Healthcare Codes and Standards (Committee Vice-Chairman).

• NFPA Healthcare Education Committee (Committee Member).

• NFPA 101® (Committee Member - Alternate)

• American Health Care Association (AHCA) Life Safety Committee (Committee Member).

History Of The Organization

In the early 1970's, Russ Phillips was working for R. David Diederich, Inc., a safety and marketing consulting firm in Rochester, NY. He was leading their safety group, providing fire and safety consulting services to general industry clients. In 1975, their first healthcare client -- a nursing home -- contracted with the firm to design a smoke detection system. After Russ completed the design phase, he had the opportunity to meet with the Director of Nursing and asked her what he believed would be a straightforward question: "What would you do when the smoke detectors go off, indicating a fire in your nursing home?". The puzzled look on her face told him all he needed to know. Russ immediately designed a fire plan for the facility and provided general training on the plan.

Shortly thereafter, the New York State Health Facilities Association, representing nursing homes throughout New York, contacted Russ and stated that they had concerns about their nursing homes' ability to respond to a fire. He was contracted to conduct presentations for the group, teaching nursing homes how to manage a fire in their facility. In the Albany seminar, a gentleman from the Seventh Day Adventist Insurance Company met up with Russ, and he discussed with Russ how they wanted to ensure that their staff were appropriately trained on managing fires, as they had facilities throughout the world and wanted a consistent methodology for fire safety.

Russ was contracted by the organization and thus began his investigations of hospital and nursing home fires and disasters in the United States and Canada. He focused on fire disasters that involved injury, building damage, or lifeloss for patients and staff. It was during these investigations that he found the primary reasons for lifeloss during a healthcare fire could be directly related to the fire plan not "fitting" the building, staffs' training to that fire plan, and the lack of training under the conditions as they would actually be during a fire.

On October 12, 1976, Russell Phillips & Associates was born. The company focused on incorporating practical approaches to fire and evacuation planning for hospitals and nursing homes. In 1977, the firm began providing training using realistic fire suppression on the patients/residents clothing and smoke simulation exercises. The hands-on piece was incorporated into the training after Russ observed that the staff were excellent at understanding the basic procedures, but panicked in real fire and smoke situations. The patients' lives were in the hands of the caregiver, and they were unprepared to protect the patient during a crisis. How could they be expected to protect the patient if they weren't trained under actual fire conditions?

As the firm began to grow from a handful of clients to more than 1,000 healthcare facilities, it evolved from solely focusing on fire safety to addressing all of the components of Emergency Management, Code Compliance, and Healthcare Community Mutual Aid Plans. The theory at the firm is that each of these programs is linked together and to properly support the healthcare industry, one needs to be acutely aware of how each of these programs interconnects. Russell Phillips & Associates' knowledge of the unique patient population in a healthcare facility, appropriate staff actions during fires and other disasters, and the regional and national emergency responses to incidents, enables the firm to meet the specific needs of the healthcare industry today and stay one step ahead of the industry in the years to come.