Fiscal Year 2025-2026
The 2025-2026 fiscal year (July 1-June 30) proved to be one of the most dynamic and transformative in recent memory for the Northwest Healthcare Response Network (the Network). Throughout the year we advanced the imperative of establishing readiness as a strategic objective for private and public organizations alike and our message has been clear: Resilient healthcare systems protect more than patients, they strengthen workforces, businesses, and the stability of our regional economy. In today’s environment, healthcare readiness is not a standalone public health function nor an isolated necessity only for healthcare. It is, and will continue to be, a foundational component of economic resilience and business continuity across every sector.
Building healthcare resilience has evolved from a defensive posture into a strategic necessity. Organizations can no longer prepare solely for isolated disruptions, they must navigate a landscape defined by frequency, complexity, and interdependence of risk. Across our state, opportunities and risks to healthcare access evolved as we prepared for unprecedented gatherings such as FIFA World Cup 2026 and responded to the devastating impacts of historic flooding in many of our communities. Our team have maintained an “Always On” posture, cultivating relationships and trust, driving towards solutions to support healthcare across the state, while also further leading informed and strategic advocacy in support of the funding imperative and improved national and state strategies imperative of our readiness role.
The Network acts as the backbone of Washington’s healthcare preparedness and emergency response, building capabilities and community that serves as the hub for readiness and response strategies. As a trusted, neutral convener and coordinator, the Network brings together healthcare providers, public agencies, and private-sector partners to ensure that critical systems remain operational when disruption occurs. This year has underscored the criticality of that role across our state as we’ve prepared and responded to multiple significant events and advanced key initiatives such as those highlighted below.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge the resolve of our partners across the state, particularly those affected by the recent 2026 summer Spokane Complex and Central Washington fires. The impacts of these fires rippled across our state and continue to do so as we present this report to you. Our entire organization has been proud to support the response and coordination efforts alongside healthcare organizations, EMS agencies, public health, emergency management, and local and state partners. Through information sharing, situational awareness, and resource coordination, response coordination across hundreds of agencies, we were able to strengthen a unified health response during rapidly evolving conditions.
In our work serving our mission to both help maintain care for those in need and help build healthcare ecosystems, our team remains unwavering in serving communities across the state.
Chief Executive Officer
NWHRN
NWHRN Board Chair
Our work with collaborators throughout the state continued to strengthen throughout the year. Stakeholders span Emergency Medical Services (EMS), public health, hospital and healthcare systems, Tribal Nations, and state agency partners such as Washington State Department of Health (DOH), among others.
The Network is a preeminent trusted voice advocating for state and national strategy on health care system resilience, including federal funding and results-oriented collaboration with the federal government. Our expertise on the imperative of sustaining investment in the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) administered through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, has helped sustain support for this primary federal investment in health care delivery system readiness. In Washington, HPP funding has helped build and sustain a mature health care preparedness system that no single hospital or organization could create on its own. These investments allow partners to monitor statewide hospital capacity, distribute timely situational awareness, issue emergency alerts, coordinate patient placement and load balancing, and support hospitals and health care organizations during incidents that exceed normal operations.
The Network Delivered the Readiness Framework for Response
The engagement of the Network spans state and national venues. Through the year, we collaborated — and continue to do so — supporting critical capabilities that enhance healthcare preparedness and response efforts. Our intentional readiness strategies are designed with our partners to address overlapping pressures including workforce shortages, emerging infectious diseases, cybersecurity threats, supply chain instability, severe weather events, and demands associated with large scale public events such as the recent FIFA World Cup 2026.
Preparedness is not achieved the moment a crisis occurs. It is built through the leadership, planning, coordination and collaboration of a shared operational framework. Throughout the year, the Network advanced a series of statewide operational tools, exercises and resources designed to strengthen our partner’s and healthcare system readiness before, during and after an emergency. These resources establish the framework that supports healthcare organizations, emergency responders, public and community partners to work together effectively when lives and critical systems are at risk.
From emergency operations and MCI planning to patient movement and tracking, family reunification, and specialty surge response, each plan builds upon a base plan and addresses a critical component of our state’s healthcare readiness ecosystem. Collectively, these resources help ensure our community has a common operating picture to rapidly coordinate decisions, allocate resources, share information, and maintain continuity of care during a crisis. The tools designed and delivered by the Network are living, operational tools designed to be exercised, evaluated and refined in collaboration with partners across state, regional and local jurisdictions.
It Was About More Than Soccer:
The FIFA World Cup 2026 squarely positioned our region on the national stage. The Network was part of extensive readiness thought leadership and planning, with a formal role co-leading the FIFA World Cup regional healthcare planning and preparedness coordination to complete mass casualty incident plans. This work included hosting the first of its kind virtual healthcare tabletop facilitated exercise this month to test local and statewide mass casualty incident (MCI) plans. It included participation from hundreds of partners, representing every region in Washington as well as state and federal partners. This milestone truly highlights the impact of the Network. By fostering trusted relationships, facilitating continuous information-sharing, and driving regional readiness, we serve as the vital connective tissue that ensures our healthcare system remains resilient under pressure. When it mattered most, our collective foundation enabled coordinated and effective action.
National Recognition Amongst Peers:
The Network was recognized in March by Common Health Coalition as a vanguard collaborative for building healthcare resilience and advancing innovative public health and healthcare partnerships. We were honored to be selected as one of five such recipients nationwide of the 2026 Common Health Coalition Catalyst Awards, which recognizes vanguard organizations advancing innovative approaches to health system partnerships. The Network is the only organization dedicated to advancing these partnerships to build health system resilience for emergencies and disasters. Accompanied by a $150,000 award, this distinction underscores the Network’s leadership in strengthening preparedness and cross-sector collaboration and helps advance our work collaborating with rural and critical access health partners.
Military and NDMS Preparedness:
The Network is advancing our region’s leadership by leading strategic engagement with state, federal and local partners to advance healthcare leadership involvement with the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) for disasters, including Large Scale Combat Operations. The role of the Network is foundational, helping prepare our healthcare community for a surge in medical care and services, patient movement and transitions when needing to ensure patients receive care from the clinical teams and locations best enable to provide more specialized levels of care, and overall strategic readiness.
Disaster Medical Coordination Center (DMCC) Planning:
This past year, the DMCC committee, made up of DMCC planning leads and Network staff successfully developed the Network DMCC Framework and Operational Annex. The work entailed ongoing reviewing and refining response plans included insights and were developed with regional DMCCs. Several of these insights informed elements of the confluent FIFA World Cup virtual tabletop exercise which was featured in May of 2026. The DMCC framework and operational annex were leveraged to create regional annexes that are adaptable to an emerging crisis.
Responding to Historic Flooding:
The Network team deployment during history floods in December 2025, exemplified the readiness and collaboration of our healthcare and emergency response partners as we responded to impacts of historic flooding across the state. Our team activated, coordinating with partners located in flood zones and accountable for healthcare services, to understand immediate impacts they faced and their immediate needs. Creating a shared situational awareness of those needs, activating resource requests and readiness for patient movement, enabled the Network team to reinforce the healthcare system’s ability to maintain care during and following the impact of the floods.
Expanding Rural and Critical Access Readiness:
Over the past year, we’ve enhanced the bidirectional relationship with our rural health partners which enables us to engage more seamlessly, fostering person-to-person connections and deeper organizational relationships. The basis for these expanded relationships initiated with the Network team convening the Rural and Critical Access clinical workgroup to understand and collect data on transfer times and associated causes of delays in transfers. Additionally, our team monitored transfer data to help ensure that our state’s rural and critical access patients were able to access the care they need in a timely manner. This work included engagement with a third of Washington’s rural and critical access facilities, spanning Pacific to Spokane counties, and continued to make progress encouraging collaboration and data sharing amongst additional care facilities. Adult patients currently comprise most transfers.
Fall Pediatric Respiratory Statewide Training:
This year, 322 participants from 15 states participated in the Network’s Annual Fall Respiratory Refresher. Made possible by sponsorship from Columbia Bank, the training offered nursing CE credits and focused on curriculum to help providers strengthen their ability to evaluate and treat pediatric respiratory illness. The training provided healthcare participants value in strengthening their respiratory assessments, asthma treatment and predictors for return to the Emergency Department. This work strengthens the ability of providers across multiple states to care for the most vulnerable in their community.
Expanding Long-Term Care Learnings and Support:
The Network, along with the long-term care advisory group, continued hosting quarterly outreach sessions with Long Term Care (LTC) providers to establish awareness for preparing resilient health care systems that save lives and serve the community during emergencies. The outreach sessions were designed as a forum for information sharing and discussions regarding emergency preparedness, response, and planning, as well as connecting LTC facilities and partners across the state.
Through the year, we grew our long-term care (LTC) engagement through coordinated planning with partners across the state. This work included the development of step-by-step guidance, training and coordinated peer support to share best practices and lessons learned to help LTC’s develop and improve their internal Emergency Operations Plan (EOPs). An extension of this work included our team conducting exercises aligned with “The Great Shake Out” earthquake exercise, which afforded partners the opportunity to practice testing these same EOPs and determining any necessary adjustments.
Our team and programs continue to engage, collaborate and incorporate the insights of partners across the state. Examples of our program engagement include the following:
Regional
The Network continues to work with response partners to assess regional vulnerabilities and prepare for potential mass casualty incidents (MCIs). Providing expertise and resources for extensive planning through the HVA and tabletop exercises, focus includes active shooter, natural disasters, transportation-related crashes, among other incidents. The Network is uniquely positioned to respond to the unexpected in terms of healthcare response, patient tracking for family reunification. We are an integral part of state’s broader mass casualty response capabilities.
The plans, annexes, tools and exercises developed by the Network this year represent a significant investment in Washington’s statewide readiness. While each addresses a specific capability or issue, they are designed to work together as an interconnected system. They are adaptable across incidents, interoperable across organizations and reflect the insights through experience of partners statewide.
By developing, testing and refining these resources before they are needed, the Network and its partners identified gaps, clarified roles and strengthened coordination in advance of a crisis. Together, they provide the framework that helps our state anticipate threats, withstand disruption and respond with greater speed, situational awareness, alignment and confidence.
The Network continues to work with response partners to assess regional vulnerabilities and prepare for potential mass casualty incidents (MCIs). Providing expertise and resources for extensive planning through the HVA and tabletop exercises, focus includes active shooter, natural disasters, transportation-related crashes, among other incidents. The Network is uniquely positioned to respond to the unexpected in terms of healthcare response, patient tracking for family reunification. We are an integral part of state’s broader mass casualty response capabilities.
The base plan describes key principles, requirements and guidelines supporting development and deployment of crisis response operations.
Patient Tracking for the purposes of family and missing persons reunification; intended for situations necessitating any level of patient tracking in aid of partner organizations.
The movement of patients at scale before, during, and after a disruptive event is a critical capability of the overall healthcare ecosystem; describes support provided to partner organizations before, during, and after disruptive events involving patient movement, placement, tracking, and/or family reunification efforts.
Outlines the process flow for requesting, accessing and utilization of patient transportation resources during a mass casualty incident when the numbers of patients requiring transportation exceeds the local and mutual aid resources within the area of the incident.
Washington’s first-ever statewide healthcare mass casualty incident (MCI) plan for the response to large or multiple injury-producing incidents occurring around the state where state level coordination, communication and resource management would support overall coordination and resource utilization.
Originating in 2020, the plan is designed to provide healthcare with the information and tools they need to develop internal pediatric disaster response plans and to provide a concept of operations for a coordinated pediatric regional response. It describes the coordination of decision making, operations, communication and deactivation/recovery for pediatric disaster response.
Outlines guidelines in the case of a burn mass casualty incident (BMCI) where capacity and capability may significantly overwhelm a local response, thus necessitating coalition, state, and/or federal coordination. The annex is flexible to fit the needs of the response to a BMCI, including a concept of operations, roles and responsibilities, and special considerations.
The HVA helps ensure preparedness and response activities align with identified healthcare and regional vulnerabilities. The Network collaborates with tribal, healthcare, public health, emergency medical services, fire and emergency management partners to assess hazards across nine different regions across Washington.
A functional exercise to test the ability of the coalition and healthcare partners to support a medical surge event in effort to foster preparedness and emergency response planning. They are designed to meet Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and Washington Department of Health (DOH) standards.
During the yearly HVA, cyber threats were identified as an extreme threat on the hazard risk matrix, which would have a high likelihood and high impact on healthcare and response partners throughout the Network coalition service area.
Comprehensive assessment in support of activities planned by health care coalitions (HCCs) in the event of long-term downtime that is a result of a utility failure or cyber-related event which affects the function of the HCC.
We remain grateful to our Sustaining Members and funding partners for their ongoing collaboration and financial support: Columbia Bank, MultiCare, EvergreenHealth, Kaiser Permanente, UW Medicine, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, Overlake Medical Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Bloodworks Northwest, Proliance Surgeons, Surgery Center of Silverdale, Aesthetic Eye Associates, Washington State Department of Health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR).
As the Network enters its next chapter, we remain guided by a unified purpose: to ensure that healthcare systems in Washington are ready, resilient, and able to provide care to all—no matter the crisis. Through trusted partnerships, strategic foresight, and unwavering commitment, we will continue to serve as the backbone of healthcare preparedness in our state.
Together with our partners, we are not only responding to emergencies, but we are also shaping the future of healthcare resilience.