Hospital Incident Command System: overview and possibilities for use in Japan

Abstract

In order to cope with a health crisis such as a large-scale disaster, coordination among multiple institutions and agencies is essential, but among them, medical institutions should play a major role. This article describes the outline of the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS), which is an Incident Management System that is widely used in medical institutions in the United States. The possibilities and issues involved in introducing HICS in Japan are also discussed. The introduction of HICS is expected to realize effective disaster medical care through collaboration between multiple agencies and industries, but many points, such as operations at small medical instructions, remain to be verified. There is a need to establish a collaborative framework that can continuously shares regional risk information and provide effective and efficient medical care when a health crisis occurs.