In a paper appearing in this issue, Adini et al. [4] describe a struggle familiar to many planners-the challenge of planning for all scenarios. They contend that allhazards, or capabilities-based planning is a more efficient way to achieve general health care system preparedness than scenario-based planning. The authors describe a systematic investigation of the components of their preparedness system that impact hospital preparedness. The paper represents an important advance on several fronts. First, it describes a system of measurement which is consistently applied to assess and improve the preparedness of hospitals. Second, it uses thoughtful analytic methods to answer the question of whether an all-hazards approach is an appropriate methodology for preparedness. Supporting this, the authors found moderate to strong correlations between preparedness measures for various kinds of disasters-including mass casualty, toxicologic, and biological events. In other words, the core of what is necessary to plan for and respond to one kind of disaster (e.g. biologic event) assists with for planning and responding to other types of disasters. This finding allows for improvements and greater efficiencies in planning and time-consuming and expensive drills and exercises; an important consideration given the current fiscal climate in countries worldwide. Third, the authors found that SOPs, training and drills made more of a contribution to overall preparedness than equipment and preparedness knowledge of personnel-an important observation that facilitates effective resource allocation.