Abstract
BackgroundA hospital's capacity and preparedness is one of the important parts of disaster planning. Hospital-related incidents, a new phenomenon in Swedish healthcare, may lead to ambulance diversions, increased waiting time at emergency departments and treatment delay along with deterioration of disaster management and surge capacity. We aimed to identify the causes and impacts of hospital-related incidents in Region Västra Götaland (western region of Sweden).MethodsThe regional registry at the Prehospital and Disaster Medicine Center was reviewed (2006–2008). The number of hospital-related incidents and its causes were analyzed.ResultsThere were an increasing number of hospital-related incidents mainly caused by emergency department's overcrowdings, the lack of beds at ordinary wards and/or intensive care units and technical problems at the radiology departments. These incidents resulted in ambulance diversions and reduced the prehospital capacity as well as endangering the patient safety.ConclusionBesides emergency department overcrowdings, ambulance diversions, endangering patient s safety and increasing risk for in-hospital mortality, hospital-related incidents reduces and limits the regional preparedness by minimizing the surge capacity. In order to prevent a future irreversible disaster, this problem should be avoided and addressed properly by further regional studies.
Highlights
A hospital's capacity and preparedness is one of the important parts of disaster planning
The aim of this paper was to identify the causes of these incidents in the Region Västra Götaland by reviewing the PKMC registry data collected between January 1st, 2006 and December 31st, 2008
The causes of subnormal capacity at affected hospitals were divided into following groups; hospital bed shortage, bed shortage at intensive care unit, bed shortage at ordinary wards, emergency departments overcrowding and technical dysfunction at radiology departments
Summary
A hospital's capacity and preparedness is one of the important parts of disaster planning. Hospital-related incidents, a new phenomenon in Swedish healthcare, may lead to ambulance diversions, increased waiting time at emergency departments and treatment delay along with deterioration of disaster management and surge capacity. We aimed to identify the causes and impacts of hospital-related incidents in Region Västra Götaland (western region of Sweden). Region Västra Götaland is the public healthcare provider for the western part of Sweden, with a population around 1.5 million. This task is achieved through around 150 primary healthcare centres and 10 emergency hospitals (the largest Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg). PKMC (Prehospital Disaster and Medicine Centre) is a regional unit responsible for (medical) risk assessment and emergency planning as well as staff training in disaster management. All incidents and consequent activities caused by them have been registered at the centers registry (PKMC registry) since 1999 and can be analyzed retrospectively
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