(August 5, 2025 — DuBois, PA) At Penn Highlands Healthcare, the safety of patients, visitors, employees, physicians and volunteers is one of its highest priorities. On August 6, 2025, the health system is standardizing all medical, facility and security alerts across its hospitals and senior living facilities to improve communication and responses during emergencies. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have recommended the use of plain language alerts to communicate clearly in emergency situations.
Throughout the health system, standardized plain language emergency alerts are replacing the color-coded codes, which have been used to notify employees, physicians and volunteers about critical situations occurring in the hospitals and senior living facilities.
The new alerts use clear, everyday language to ensure that everyone – including patients and visitors – understand the nature of the situations and the actions required to be taken.
“By sharing plain language alerts with patients and visitors, it helps to improve communication and reduce confusion during emergencies, said Megan Bussard, System Vice President of Safety and Quality at Penn Highlands Healthcare. “The new alerts help ensure that everyone, including non-healthcare professionals, understands the nature and scope of an emergency, facilitating faster and more effective responses.”
The alerts will be identical for allhospitals and senior livingfacilities in the Northwest, Central and Southwest regions.
Alerts will reflect three types of situations:
- Medical, such as alerts for the Rapid Response Team
- Facility, such as a fire
- Security, such as a combative patient
“We are standardizing the alerts to eliminate confusion that can be associated with the ambiguous codes; help facilitate faster responses by clearly stating the emergency; and provide greater transparency by sharing clear information about the nature of the emergency,” explained Bussard.
For more than 10 weeks, the health system’s employees have been receiving training on the new alerts to enrich their understanding and increase their safety awareness so that they are well prepared to respond when the new alerts are announced.
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Penn Highlands Healthcare was officially formed in 2011 and is comprised of nine hospitals. Penn Highlands Brookville, Penn Highlands Clearfield, Penn Highlands Connellsville, Penn Highlands DuBois, Penn Highlands Elk, Penn Highlands Huntingdon, Penn Highlands Mon Valley, Penn Highlands Tyrone have served area communities for the past 100+ years. Penn Highlands State College is a new state-of-the-art hospital that opened in 2024. The health system’s business continuum also includes a home care agency, long-term care facilities and residential senior living communities, as well as durable medical equipment companies and retail pharmacies.
Penn Highlands Healthcare has evolved into an organization with approximately 6,200 employees in 150+ locations throughout 26 counties in Pennsylvania that include community medical buildings, outpatient facilities, surgery centers and physician practices. The facilities have a total of 1,396 inpatient, skilled nursing and personal care beds. The system, which has 849 physicians and 427 advanced practice providers on staff, offers a wide range of care and treatments with specialty units for cancer, cardiovascular/thoracic, neurosurgery, pulmonology, neonatal and high-risk pregnancy patients. Being focused on what is important – patients and families – makes Penn Highlands Healthcare a great choice for healthcare in the region.