Assessment of TUMS affiliated hospitals’ preparedness for dealing with Covid_19

The prevalence of emerging and re-emerging diseases has made the need for basic preparations for all health care organizations more crucial. Strengthening preparedness and formulating crisis strategies will have a great impact on reducing casualties. Given the importance of preparing hospitals to deal with such an outbreak and reduce the resulting mortality, the present study was conducted to assess their readiness against Covid-19.

The present study is a quantitative and descriptive cross-sectional research conducted from October to March 2019. Data collection used the standard checklists prepared by the European Center for the Prevention and Control of Coronavirus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, consisting of eight domains and 21 components. The minimum score that each hospital could get in this checklist was 143 and the maximum was 429. The sampling method in the present study was a census, and nine reference hospitals for Corona were included in the study. All hospitals’ directors, managers, quality officers and crisis secretaries and others related to hospital readiness during Covid-19 were recruited by the census.

On average, the hospitals scored 391 out of 429, indicating a fairly "high readiness" in dealing with Covid-19. The highest score obtained by the hospitals was 425 and the lowest score was 349. In terms of preparation areas, the hospitals’ readiness was higher than 80% in all areas. The highest readiness of hospitals was in the fifth  domain, i.e. Hand hygiene, personal protective equipment and hospital waste management. The 7th domain namely, patient placement and relocation, and patient visitor access was of the lowest preparation.

The hospitals were of fairly appropriate readiness to deal with Covid-19. This level of preparedness, despite being desirable, might not reflect the real capacity of hospitals to deal with this disease. Regular evaluation of the Covid referral hospitals could help make these hospitals more prepared. Also, the experiences of hospitals that were more prepared should be used to improve the condition of other hospitals.