Emergency Preparedness Starts at the Front Door

Every emergency plan has to answer two questions: who must be accounted for, and who will help the visitors get out? OSHA requires covered emergency action plans to account for employees after an evacuation, and it recommends planning to assist and account for visitors too. CMS emergency-preparedness rules direct long-term-care facilities to track on-duty staff and sheltered residents.

Visitors are the gap. Families, vendors, contractors, and delivery drivers can all be in the building when the alarm goes off. If the only record of them is a paper sheet by the front door, nobody is carrying it to the parking lot.

The three capabilities that matter

1. An evacuation roster you can pull up anywhere

During an emergency you need one list: every visitor checked in right now, who they came to see, and when they arrived.

That list only exists if check-in and checkout actually happen. When they do, the evacuation roster is current the moment you open it. Staff can pull it up on the web dashboard, open it on a phone in the Companion app, or print it on any printer. At the assembly point, it tells you exactly which names to look for.

2. Reaching the right staff at once

Emergencies don't wait for an overhead page to reach the far wing. Mass alerts go out by text and email to the staff groups you define, whether people are at the nurses' station or in the parking lot, and staff can send them from the dashboard or from a phone.

Groups matter as much as speed. A facility-wide weather alert and a discreet security notice to leadership are different messages with different audiences. Build the groups and load the templates before you need them.

3. Knowing when someone hasn't come back

Residents leave for appointments, dialysis, and family outings. When an expected return time passes with no update, staff get an overdue-return alert, so a missing resident surfaces in minutes instead of at the next shift change. Your elopement and missing-person procedures take it from there.

Prevention is also preparedness

Some emergencies start at the front door. ArrivSure checks every arrival against your ban list, whether that's a former employee escorted out last year or a family member under a protective order. A banned visitor's check-in stops at the kiosk, and designated staff get an alert right away, before the person is past the lobby.

Drill it

Whatever system you use, put it in the drill. At the next fire drill, add one step: produce the visitor roster and reconcile it against the people at the assembly point. If that step is slow, or produces a list nobody trusts, you've found the gap in a drill instead of a real evacuation.

Sources and current guidance

Last reviewed September 28, 2026.

• OSHA emergency action plan standard
• OSHA guidance on emergency-plan elements, including visitors
• CMS emergency preparedness guidance, Appendix Z

Confirm current requirements with your regulator and safety advisor.