Disaster management in hospitals

A disaster situation for a hospital occurs when the need for medical treatment overwhelms the actual hospital treatment capacity. 1 This may be defined by numerical or situational means; the threshold must always be the result of an individual assessment of the given health care unit. A disaster situation may also be defined as the point of no return to normal standard operating procedures in a certain hospital. In case of a disaster, health care units are required to have and activate a disaster management plan (DMP). In the USA the requirements of the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) are trend-setting; in European countries, regulations are normally set by state requirements or by-laws. According to the location of the disaster, it is regarded useful to discriminate the DMP for external disasters (e.g. road accident, air crash), internal disasters (e.g. fire in the hospital) and finally external disasters that have an impact on the hospital as well (e.g. earthquake, hurricane)) '2 The JCAHO requires US hospitals to have such a divided DMP; in other countries this prerequisite is only recommendedY

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