The Responding Hospital Infectious Disease Emergency Response Plan of The Communicable Disease Control Medical Network--The Evaluation And Review Report of The 2018 Exercise

The hospital emergency response plan dealing with infectious diseases in the Communicable Disease Control Medical Network is the foundation of its emergency response. Hospitals may evaluate their emergency preparedness by performing exercises. To complete and evaluate the response plan of the responding hospital's contingency planning command system and various processes, the semi-warning ''table-top'' method was used to conduct exercises in six responding hospitals by Taiwan Centers for Disease Control in 2018. Exercise results showed that simple non-composite professional practices, such as receiving an infectious disease patient, disease notification, handling patient corpse, and post-event recovery, were performed well. But the response practices for patient surge, management of infected medical staffs in the epidemic period, including emptying the whole hospital, recalling hospital staffs, trouble shooting of negative pressure isolation rooms, and setting the response time for manpower, equipment, and materials dispatch during the surge, were not performed well. The operation of the contingency command system, including the duties of the responsible personnel, the mastery of anomalies or emergencies, and the decision-making of the command system, should be strengthened. In the future, to improve the emergency response capacity of the respective hospitals, continuously conducting the auditing exercises to evaluate its infectious disease emergency response plan is necessary.