The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has significantly revised the standard for emergency management (EC.1.4) in the 2001 edition of the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals. Although hospitals have always had to plan to respond to a “variety of disasters,” the 2001 standards continues to state that the hospital response plans must be “based on a hazard vulnerability analysis performed by the hospital.” The hazards that have occurred or could occur must be balanced against the populations that is t risk to determine the vulnerability to the given hazard. Formalizing the requirement the process within hospitals, and organizations should now be able to produce documentation to evidence the analysis. This document will serve to discuss the factors ente