Averting HEALTHCARE NETWORK catastrophe

Mass casualty disasters, whether they are man-made or natural calamities affect not only a great number of people, they cause significant disruptions in the hour-by-hour operations of critical infrastructures such as hospitals, fire stations, police stations and ambulances. Although these infrastruc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial Engineer 2011-05, Vol.43 (5), p.32
Main Authors: Bull, Maria T, Sala-Diakanda, Serge N
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Contingency planning
Disasters
Emergency medical care
Evacuations & rescues
Health care networks
Industrial engineering
Infrastructure
Mass casualty incidents
Medical supplies
Monte Carlo simulation
Optimization techniques
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Summary:Mass casualty disasters, whether they are man-made or natural calamities affect not only a great number of people, they cause significant disruptions in the hour-by-hour operations of critical infrastructures such as hospitals, fire stations, police stations and ambulances. Although these infrastructures usually have plans for such events, the public at large generally is not prepared to respond adequately when a catastrophe hits. On the other hand, the effectiveness of those plans depends on how they were developed. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality created the Hospital Surge Model to help practitioners study the behavior of hospitals after a tragedy has occurred. This model, for instance, can generate the distribution of the severity of the injuries among victims. The field of industrial engineering offers powerful techniques to assess the impact of alternate modes of operations when dealing with a complex problem such as a mass casualty disaster. Systems thinking and systems dynamic modeling are powerful methods and tools for understanding the complex behaviors of healthcare networks.
ISSN:2471-9579