Disaster preparedness in Australian hospitals: a cross-sectional survey

Objective: This study examined the extent of disaster preparedness in Australian hospitals, seeking to identify opportunities for improvement. Insufficient preparation can lead to mortality/morbidity in post-disaster scenarios. Early identification of resolvable shortcomings in preparing for events is an important goal. Materials and methods: A purpose-designed anonymous survey was distributed to all Local-Hospital-Networks, organizations responsible for managing public hospitals and their disaster preparedness, across Australia's six states and two territories. Participant recruitment targeted disaster-managers, emergency-preparedness-managers, and business-continuity-managers. Results: Survey responses were received from 53/130 (40.8 %) of Australia's Local-Hospital-Networks with representation from six states and one territory. Most risk reduction measures were widely adopted. However, for 17/39 (43.6 %) measures, one-fifth of the respondents had either never heard of the measure or were not implementing it. Underutilized measures related to post-disaster-triage, emergency-evacuation, water-backup, secondary-electricity-feed, point-of-care-testing, alternative-decontamination-sites, and waste-management-systems. Local-Hospital-Networks' region-type, catchment-population and number-of-healthcare-facilities were associated with adoption of underutilized measures. Conclusion: Although 22/39 (56.4 %) of carefully chosen measures were widely implemented, the state of Australia's disaster preparedness is variable. There remains room for improvement, particularly against an “all-hazards” standard. Limited implementation of disaster-triage, evacuation-measures, and procedural issues, suggests that Australian Local-Hospital-Networks, particularly those managing fewer facilities are not sufficiently prepared for catastrophes.