Healthcare coalitions · Where small agencies get help

The Preparedness Resource You're Already Eligible For

By Dr. Arzoo Salami, physician & founder, SurgeReady · August 18, 2026 · 4 min read

Somewhere in your agency, someone’s name is on the emergency plan. In a small agency that person usually has another job as well, and preparedness is the part that waits until something happens.

There is a group in your region whose work is partly that job. It is federally funded, and a lot of small agencies have never heard of it.

What a Healthcare Coalition Is

A healthcare coalition is a set of healthcare organizations and government agencies in one region that plan and train for emergencies together. Hospitals, EMS, community clinics, dialysis centers, skilled nursing facilities, urgent care, public health, home health and hospice.

They are organized by region rather than by provider type because emergencies are regional. A wildfire does not evacuate a hospital and leave the home health patients two streets away where they are. Patients move between these organizations on an ordinary day, and they move faster on a bad one. The coalition exists so the people managing that movement have met before.

Who Pays for It

Coalitions are funded through the Hospital Preparedness Program, which is run by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

That money does not go to agencies. HPP funds 62 recipients: every state, the territories, the District of Columbia, and three jurisdictions large enough to receive directly, which are Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles County. Those recipients fund the coalitions, and the coalitions are what reach you.

This is worth understanding, because it explains what shows up at your door. A small agency does not receive a check. It gets access to training and exercises it could not put together on its own, because the cost sits somewhere upstream.

What Actually Reaches You

What arrives at a small agency is not money. It is:

• Coalition membership, and the regional contacts that come with it
• Exercises you can join instead of designing and running your own
• Technical assistance when you have a question and no one on staff to answer it
• Free federal template libraries, primarily ASPR TRACIE
• Data tools like the emPOWER Map

For an agency where preparedness sits on top of someone’s existing job, that is worth more than a grant would be.

Los Angeles County's coalition publishes what its members can take part in: incident command and decontamination training, FEMA courses, disaster management courses, an annual Medical and Health Exercise, statewide exercises, and a shared library of manuals, plans and after-action reports. It runs ten regional Disaster Resource Centers, each with a coordinator whose job includes knowing who is in the region.

The second item on that list is the one I would look at first. Designing your own exercise, running it, and writing an after-action review that holds up is a real piece of work. Taking part in one the region is already running is a different proposition, and you come away with more, because the other organizations are in the room.

What It Looks Like in One County

Los Angeles County's coalition is organized into ten healthcare sectors, and home health and hospice is one of them. That sector covers roughly 380 centers, it has its own application for the current year, and it has both a county liaison and a sector representative who works at a home health provider.

San Bernardino County runs a healthcare preparedness partnership on the same model, with more than 300 eligible member organizations, home health and hospice named among them, and periodic drills and exercises.

Neither of these is unusual. It is what the structure looks like once you go and find it.

Finding Yours

Every state receives this funding, so every state has coalitions. Where they sit varies. The usual places to ask are your state health department's preparedness office and your county public health department or EMS agency. Many coalitions have a site of their own with a page for new members.

While you are looking, ASPR TRACIE is worth an afternoon on its own. It is the federal technical assistance library, it is open to anyone, and it holds emergency plan templates, exercise materials and guidance written for specific provider types. The HHS emPOWER map is public as well, and it will tell you how many Medicare beneficiaries in a given ZIP code rely on electricity for medical equipment. Nobody charges for either.

What the Coalition Asks Back

Coalitions work because their members turn up. That means attending the meetings, taking part in the exercise when it is scheduled, and answering the county when it asks how many of your patients depend on oxygen. An agency that joins and never appears has a line on a roster and little else.

This is the part I would take seriously. The value in a coalition is not the document library. It is that on a bad day you are calling someone whose name you know, and they know yours.

The Work Is Still Yours

Your preparedness requirements do not soften because your region is well organized. A surveyor arriving in March will ask for your plan, your training records and your exercise documentation regardless of who else was in the room. But meeting all of it alone, from a standing start, when preparedness is the fourth thing on your list, is a harder job than it needs to be.

Our Ready-Kit covers the documents: the emergency plan, communication plan, training log, tabletop exercise and after-action review, written for your provider type. It is not a substitute for a coalition, and if you have one hour to spend, I would spend it finding yours.

Coalition names, structures, membership arrangements and offerings vary by region and change over time. This article is general information, not legal or regulatory advice. Confirm details with the coalition covering your area, and verify your own requirements at 42 CFR §484.102 or §418.113.