Methods for Hospital To Promote Disaster Preparedness Against Loss of Power

Introduction: The 2018 Hokkaido earthquake caused a power outage in all of Hokkaido. In Japan, several hospitals have generators for outages. However, when electricity is lost, several hospitals are disrupted because they are accustomed to having a stable power supply on a daily basis. This study describes the efforts of a hospital that were not accustomed to disaster response to evaluate and implement power-loss countermeasures. The purpose of this study is to measure the usefulness of hospital power-loss countermeasures. Method: 1) Classification of Japan’s existing power-loss countermeasures. 2) Hospital evaluation of the classified power-loss measures. 3) Confirmation of the usefulness of the hospital’s power-loss countermeasures. Results: Power-loss countermeasures were classified into four categories. 1.) Equipment enhancement: this measure is expensive but can prevent loss of power, 2.) Purchase of goods: this measure is inexpensive and alternative power is available, 3.) Manual creation, and 4.) Training. Training measures can help smoothen the hospital’s response after a loss of power. A hospital evaluated whether those measures were appropriate for that hospital. As a result, some of the measures were immediately put into practice. Conclusion: This hospital was not accustomed to disaster response, and at first, they did not seem to know where to apply countermeasures. However, after implementing the measures, the hospital announced within its organization that the next step was training. It became clear that by presenting specific measures and evaluation methods, the hospital could create good practices. In the future, web-based evaluation methods should be developed so that all hospitals in Japan can work on measures to counteract power loss.