Introduction: Disaster can strike any time and can cause severe catastrophe to us. It strikes with suddenness and fury and has a curious tendency of choosing the most inappropriate moment . While it is very difficult to prevent disasters, it is certainly possible to be prepared for facing and handling the disaster situation in a way that ensures minimum damage to life, limb and property. Hospitals are organization that remains full of people round the clock and any disaster affecting hospital can cause heavy damage to life. Disaster poses a unique challenge for every medical care facility in terms of infrastructure, capability, & preparedness. As every disaster presents extremely diverse & multi–dimensional problems, hospitals will require formulating their disaster response plans to adequately respond to each possible situation.

Aim

To evaluate disaster preparedness of select Public & Pvt multispecialty hospital at Delhi NCR.

Objectives

To study the disaster preparedness of the select Public & Pvt multispecialty hospital at Delhi NCR, by using checklist.

Materials and Methods: A validated checklist with 25 parameters based on saint Luis Disaster Plan check list and NDMA guideline prepared for evaluating the disaster preparedness of select public & Pvt Hospital of Delhi NCR. In addition to the checklist, formal and informal discussions and interviews were carried out with the key functionaries to identify deficiencies in the input, process and output.

The saint Luis Disaster Plan check list along with NDMA guideline¹ , used for the study to assess the State of preparedness of the Hospital has 25 broad parameters. They are as under:

1. Foundational Consideration
2. Surveillance
3. Identification of Authorized Personnel
4. Activation of The Plan
5. Alerting System
6. Response
7. Hospital Disaster Control Command Centre
8. Security
9. Communication System
10. Internal Traffic Flow and Control
11. External Traffic Flow and Control
12. Visitors
13. Media
14. Reception of Casualties and Victims
15. Hospital Evacuation
16. Relocation of Patients and Staff
17. Hospital out of Communication or Cut off from Resources
18. Equipment, Services, Facility and Laboratory Assessment
19. Pharmaceuticals
20. Post Disaster Recovery
21. Education and Training
22. Key Internal Personnel
23. Key External Personnel/Agencies
24. Incident Command System
25. Exercising The Disaster Planning Programme

This checklist was circulated for different group of officials as relevant to the particular department or services for which they are responsible for and associated with. For examples, the questionnaire related to Security facilities were addressed to the Chief Security Officer and questionnaire related to the public relation concern was sent to the Public Relation Officer. The results were recorded in Disaster Plan evaluation check list in ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Not Applicable’ (N.A).

Results: The findings of the base–line evaluation based on checklist were used to identify the deficiencies in the existing system of disaster preparedness and response through system analysis of inputs, process and outputs of both public and Pvt multispecialty hospital. Both hospitals have a large number of deficiency to handle the victims. The systems are in place but need to reorganized and implementation to be done in strict manner. 

Conclusions: This study had the aim to evaluate the disaster preparedness of the Select Public & Pvt Hospital. A  Disaster Plan should be prepared, circulated and implemented exercising Principles of Management of Planning , Organizing , Staffing , Leading , Controlling along with PDCA cycle approach(Plan, Do, Check and Act).