Hospitals` disaster resilience on the case of healthcare institutions of small capacity

Abstract

In case of disasters, caused by natural hazards or antrophogene factors, it is important to preserve the function of health institutions. The World Health Organization has developed the HSI (Hospital Safety Index) method that can categorize a healthcare facility in terms of disaster safety in a simple and relatively reliable way. If a healthcare facility has a smaller capacity (up to 20 beds) it can be assessed using a simplified method of HSI according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization. By assessing the list of elements according to the recommendations, the potential weaknesses of the facilities that can lead to security threats can be preliminarily identified. On that basis, emergency interventions could also be defined in order to increase the safety of the healthcare facility. Paper uses methods (the standard HSI method and the method applied to small-capacity hospitals) for assessing the resistance on the selected case of a low capacity healthcare facility in Belgrade.