Countermeasures to Improve Hospital Business Continuity in a Disaster

Abstract

It is important for a hospital to take countermeasures to reduce the damage of natural disasters such as earthquake because they need to provide necessary healthcare services to earthquake victims. However, there is no study on ways to maintain and improve hospitals' healthcare continuity. The aim of this study is to clarify what kinds of countermeasures should be taken, and to make a list of concrete countermeasures that can provide more information for hospital staff who need to take action for hospital business continuity. As a result, five countermeasure types can be specified, and 253 more detailed countermeasures for our proposed list are extracted based on these countermeasure types. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed list is confirmed in disaster base hospital A, Kawaguchi City.