A Business Emergency Operations Center (“BEOC”) is a centralized private sector organized, managed and staffed emergency coordination/operations centered focused on all-hazard disaster prevention, preparation, response and recovery. The goal of the BEOC is to make the private sector self-reliant and self-sufficient during emergencies through information sharing and shared situational awareness.

 

The Puerto Rico Business Emergency Operations Center (“PR BEOC”) is a not-for-profit Private Public Partnership (“P3”) created for the purpose of facilitating coordination, enabling two-way communications, enabling a portfolio of available resources and enhancing critical infrastructure resiliency. Likewise, it was created in order to support disaster relief and strengthen critical infrastructure in Puerto Rico through a collaborative, information sharing effort between the private sector, state and federal government agencies during emergency response. Specifically, sixteen (16) private sector leading committees were identified, so that they can serve as liaisons with the critical infrastructure sectors they represented, as outlined in the Federal Government’s National Emergency Plan (“National Plan”).

 

Specifically, Puerto Rico’s health infrastructure is mainly composed of a private business community. For this reason, an important aspect of a plan for enhancing resilience in future events, will be to focus on the different private sectors of the HPH. This health sector will be analyze following the Federal SSP to achieve a sector-specific plan (hereinafter, “SSP”) for Puerto Rico. Based upon the experience gained and lessons learned after Hurricane Maria, as well as from real world incidents and events that have occurred over the last years, the plan to reduce critical infrastructure risks and create a collaborative environment for future events will be better organized. Primarily, the Puerto Rico’s Healthcare and Private Health Sector-Specific Plan (hereinafter, “PR HPH SSP”) will provide an effective management of the healthcare services in future incidents or events that can place in danger the healthcare system of the island. Moreover, and as established in the federal Healthcare and Public Health Sector-Specific Plan (hereinafter, “Federal SSP”), the two core tenets will be to achieve a collaborating risk management and a public-private sector partnership.