Hospital Disaster Management Response Plan Paper

A disaster management plan should address hazard prevention, risk mitigation, disaster response, and maintaining business continuity. The following steps should be taken in the development of a hospital disaster management response plan; identify key individuals that will make up the preparedness and response planning team are; conduct a risk assessment to identify areas of vulnerability, define objectives and set goals, develop a plan that investigates different options of response as well as identifying resources needed, distribute plan after it is approve, lastly implement and maintain the plan by way of training and practice drills. Additionally, hospitals should collaborate with public health agencies to ensure there is an alignment

Hospitals face many challenges when developing a disaster management response plan starting with financial cost which can be prohibitive to some hospitals. Training and exercises have a financial impact as well as affecting patient care when staff is pulled to participate in drills. Furthermore, due to the unlikelihood of certain disasters happening, stockpiling supplies is often not considered a necessity. A water outage is another issue that can arise during an emergency and depending on how long the outage is could force an evacuation. Alternative water supplies that may be considered are bottled water, storage areas for potable and non-potable water within the hospital such as a swimming pool or bins, on-site storage tank, or back up well water. Loss of key communication systems such as health information technology (IT) and telecommunications

Additionally, the hospital disaster management plan will address the management of much needed resources and assets needed during an emergency. Lack of communication is often an issue that arises in emergencies therefore redundant systems need to be in place in the event of utility failure or loss of communication. Hospitals should have agreements in place for supplementary sources for things such as power, communication, and water. Shortages or depletion of resources and supplies should be anticipated and one person should be assigned to monitor supply inventory to ensure an adequate amount of supplies are maintained by way of mutual aid relationships with nearby hospitals and vendors. Triage will be vital to avoid taxing medical resources due to the number of casualties. During preparedness a hospital should assume computers will be lost and print key information that will be needed in a disaster situation. If a hospital loses any of these vital resources without a backup it would require patients to be evacuated. (MHA,