Emergency plan rules in Louisiana
One licence type researched, regulated by Louisiana Department of Health — Health Standards Section. Every requirement below carries the rule that imposes it.
Skilled nursing facility
Licensed in Louisiana as Nursing Facility, by Louisiana Department of Health — Health Standards Section.
La. R.S. 40:2009.25; LAC Title 48
All nursing facility emergency plans are submitted yearly to the local or parish OHSEP. Separately, LDH does not approve full plans — it requires emergency preparedness plan SUMMARIES annually and again whenever the plan is changed, modified or amended. Two different counterparties, two different artefacts, two different triggers.
Authority: Local / Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (OHSEP)
Cadence: Yearly
Louisiana Model Nursing Home Emergency Plan — Louisiana publishes a Model Nursing Home Emergency Plan and requires the facility's plan to conform to it. This is a prescribed template, not guidance — build the plan on the model rather than submitting your own structure.
Louisiana nursing facilities must enter current information into Mstat (or the current LDH emergency preparedness database) before the fifteenth of each month. This is a standing monthly operational obligation, not an emergency-time action, and it is the requirement most often missed because no national template contains anything like it.
LAC Title 48 / LDH emergency preparedness reportingNursing facilities located in the parishes named in La. R.S. 40:2009.25(A) submit their emergency preparedness information and documentation to the department for review. Check whether your parish is named — the obligation is geographic, not universal.
La. R.S. 40:2009.25(A)- Louisiana's regime is the most demanding in the country and is built for evacuation under hurricane, not shelter-in-place. Treat the model plan, the annual OHSEP filing, the LDH summary and the monthly Mstat entry as four separate obligations.
Reviewed 2026-07-30
What this page is
The requirements Louisiana places on a facility emergency preparedness plan, taken from the state’s own rules rather than a national template. Where we have confirmed something against primary text it is stated plainly; where we have not, it says so and names what to check. Nothing here is inferred from what other states do.
The part that is the same everywhere
The federal floor does not vary by state. OSHA 29 CFR §1910.38 binds any employer: reporting an emergency, evacuation and exit-route assignments, critical-operations shutdown, accounting for everyone afterwards, rescue and medical duties, and naming who to ask about the plan. That layer, plus the exit-route, alarm and first-aid rules and the fire code’s plan structure, is covered in the main crash course rather than repeated on all fifty state pages.
Write the plan
The Emergency Plan Builder produces the document itself and is driven by this same research, so the two cannot disagree about what Louisiana requires. The Compliance Calendar puts the drills and inspections on dates.