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Test a crisis plan
For aged care providers, hospitals and health services. Your executive and site leads work through a realistic emergency around a table in your building, in two to three hours. No residents, patients or care routines are disturbed. You get a dated report and an action register to show your board and your assessor.
Answer four quick questionsYour exercise is designed by our director, Dan Epstein, a practising GP who trained at The Alfred, Western Health and Eastern Health, so the clinical calls in it hold up. He also volunteered with a Red Cross emergency response unit. One to three facilitators with defence wargaming experience run it with your team.
Is this for you?
- Your standards say emergency plans must be tested, and your board or assessor wants the evidence.
- Your plans have been drilled, but your executive has not had to make the calls together.
- Your hospital needs its code brown or surge plan exercised before summer.
- A new plan, a new site or a new executive team needs its first real test.
What you get
- A scenario chosen to stretch your plan
- A dated report, mapped to your standard
- An action register with owners and dates
How it runs
Before
We read your plan and agree what the exercise must test. You choose who plays: executives, site or unit leads, or both. Usually 8 to 20 people.
On the day
Two to three hours around a table in your building. The emergency unfolds in rounds, and your team makes the calls it would make for real. A short debrief straight after.
After
On a date we agree at scoping: a dated report of what held and what surfaced, an action register with an owner and a date on each line, and a map to your standard: the Aged Care Quality Standards (Outcome 2.10, emergency and disaster management), the NSQHS Standards or AS 4083.
What it looks like at the table
Your team sits around one table with your plan. Each round brings news: the power is out, two staff call in sick, a family is on the phone. The team decides what to do, who does it and what to tell people. We note every call and how long it took.
Exercises we can build for you
- A heatwave and a power loss
- An outbreak across sites
- A cyber outage that takes out records
- A night evacuation with short staff
- A code brown: mass casualties arrive at a regional emergency department
- A patient surge that outruns beds and staff
Price
From A$12,000, plus GST, for one site.
Start with one site, under your approval limit. It counts as site one if you roll out.
Each extra site on the same scenario gets its own dated report: A$4,000 if we run it, or A$2,500 if your own trained leader runs it and fills in our report template. Training your leader is A$1,500.
Twelve homes, for example: A$56,000 with us at every site, or A$41,000 with your own leader running the other eleven, training included.
Two plans at one site, such as code brown and surge: one combined exercise in a half day from A$12,000, or two full exercises on one day from A$16,000.
Public hospitals and other public bodies: no deposit. We invoice against your purchase order on your payment terms, and send our ABN and insurance certificates with the quote.
Book about four weeks ahead. Your report date is set when we scope the game.
Proof
Having so many relationships to consider and information to integrate felt like a good simulation of the kind of decisions and pressure that governments would be under in a crisis.
Player, Before the Rising Sun 2023- Honest note: aged care and hospitals are new for us. Our crisis games so far were national: Before the Rising Sun put government, defence and farming tables through a food shortage, and ended with players drafting a letter of findings to government.
- Our director co-authored a 2025 Safety Science study on designing crisis exercises, one of 12 authors: Expert-derived recommendations for designing and facilitating tabletop crisis exercises (doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2025.106898).
- The report records what happened in the exercise and what it surfaced. It is not an audit opinion, a certification or a guarantee.
How we work
What you tell us stays private
We sign your NDA, and so does every facilitator. We only name you with your written OK.
You own the findings
Show the report to your board, regulator or funders. Want to publish it? You can.
Paying
Half to book, half within 30 days after the exercise. Public bodies: no deposit, paid on your purchase order. Prices plus GST.
If plans change
Move the date once, free, with 14 days' notice. Cancel more than 21 days out and the deposit comes back, less design work done.
Full terms: How we work and terms. We carry A$1M professional indemnity and A$10M public liability cover, and more on request.
Four quick questions
Two minutes. We reply within two working days with a format and a price. If it fits, you pick a time to talk.
Keep it general here. We sign your NDA before you share anything sensitive.
Prefer to write? email@longgameproject.org