Crisis Management System in Hospitals

병원의 위기관리 시스템

This study is to introduce a comprehensive framework of a crisis management system developed at a prominent hospital in South Korea. Throughout recent decades, especially in the recent years, the way in which to cope with both internal and external challenges has been one of the most critical issues. Since the incident management system in the U.S. is acknowledged as the most advanced crisis management model in the world, a portion of this study refers to the Hospital Incident Command System(HICS) provided by the California Emergency Medical Services Authority(EMSA). Nevertheless, the framework suggested in this article was designed based on a distinctive Korean hospital setting. The main contents of this study are as follows; categorization of each type of crisis, organization of a crisis management team in a non-crisis or crisis state, crisis assessment by life cycle stage, and establishment of crisis management protocol. Even though many types of crises are unspecified, those can be categorized into external crisis, medical crisis, and utility & activity failure. A crisis management organization should be operated and consisted differently- depending on a crisis or non-crisis situation. From a life-cycle perspective, the range by which the crisis should be managed extends from pre-stage to post-stage of the crisis. It is important to set proper scenarios and manuals by crisis type to develop a crisis management framework of high quality. With continuous efforts, hospitals can prepare for the uncertainty to better concentrate on core business operations.