Your emergency contact list is only current if the numbers still ring
Federal law makes you keep an emergency preparedness communication plan and review it on a fixed cycle. It does not accept the binder as proof. Surveyors are told to ask for evidence of the review, and a page of numbers nobody has dialed since last year is not evidence.
What the surveyor is instructed to do
“Verify that all contact information has been reviewed and updated at least every 2 years (annually for LTC facilities) by asking to see evidence of the review.”
CMS State Operations Manual, Appendix Z, survey procedure for E-0030
The same rule binds 16 provider types
This is not a nursing home rule that others borrow. The communication-plan requirement is written in identical terms across sixteen CMS provider types, and it is surveyed under the Appendix Z E-tags rather than the condition-specific tags most readiness programs are built around. That is exactly why it gets missed.
The cadence is the only thing that differs: long-term care reviews annually, everyone else at least every two years. The required contact categories differ only for LTC and ICF/IID, which must also carry the State Licensing and Certification Agency, and the Ombudsman or Protection and Advocacy Agency respectively.
| Provider type | Citation | Review cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Hospitals | 42 CFR § 482.15(c) | Every 2 years |
| Critical access hospitals | 42 CFR § 485.625(c) | Every 2 years |
| Hospices | 42 CFR § 418.113(c) | Every 2 years |
| Home health agencies | 42 CFR § 484.102(c) | Every 2 years |
| ESRD / dialysis facilities | 42 CFR § 494.62(c) | Every 2 years |
| Ambulatory surgical centers | 42 CFR § 416.54(c) | Every 2 years |
| Rural health clinics and FQHCs | 42 CFR § 491.12(c) | Every 2 years |
| Long-term care facilities | 42 CFR § 483.73(c) | Annually |
| Intermediate care facilities (ICF/IID) | 42 CFR § 483.475(c) | Every 2 years |
| PACE organizations | 42 CFR § 460.84(c) | Every 2 years |
| Psychiatric residential treatment facilities | 42 CFR § 441.184(c) | Every 2 years |
| Community mental health centers | 42 CFR § 485.920(c) | Every 2 years |
| Comprehensive outpatient rehab facilities | 42 CFR § 485.68(c) | Every 2 years |
| Clinics, rehab agencies and public health agencies | 42 CFR § 485.727(c) | Every 2 years |
| Organ procurement organizations | 42 CFR § 486.360(c) | Every 2 years |
| Religious nonmedical health care institutions | 42 CFR § 403.748(c) | Every 2 years |
Surveyed under Appendix Z as E-0029 (the communication plan), E-0030 (names and contact information) and E-0031 (contact information for emergency officials).
What we actually do
We dial the roster, on a schedule
Not a mail-merge confirmation email. A real call to every number on the plan, recorded, with who answered and how long it took. Disconnected and reassigned lines are flagged by name.
You get a dated attestation
Per-number result, timestamped, signed by an independent party. That is the artifact the survey procedure is asking for when it says evidence of the review. See a sample →
Quarterly, not on the regulatory floor
The rule sets the minimum at once a year for long-term care and once every two years for everyone else. Numbers rot faster than that. Four data points a year also make a trend your quality committee can act on, rather than a single annual snapshot.
One program across settings
If you operate a hospital, a home health agency and a nursing home, that is one roster program and three different review cycles. We track the cycle each entity is actually on.
Find out which numbers no longer ring
Send us the contact list from your emergency preparedness plan. We will dial it, score it, and show you what a surveyor would find.
Citations were verified against eCFR and the CMS State Operations Manual. Regulations change; confirm the current text against the official source before relying on it. ResponseProof is a quality-assurance and evidence tool, not legal advice and not a guarantee of survey outcomes.