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 normall…