Assessing Readiness ‌of Khorramabad University Hospitals to Respond to COVID--19 Epidemic based on WHO-EMRO Checklist

 The spread and epidemic of COVID-19, as a new disease, challenged many health achievements. In hospitals, as the center of crisis management activities, it is very important to develop a crisis preparedness plan. In this study, the response-readiness of Khorram Abad hospitals in the crisis of COVID-19 was discussed.

 This study is a descriptive and applied research that was conducted cross-sectionally in the summer of 1400 in two stages. In the first stage, the condition of 3 Khorram Abad University Hospitals was based on a checklist WHO-EMRO evaluation of the hospital's response readiness to deal with the covid disease was done. The data were analyzed after being recorded in Excel. Based on the obtained results, the weak points of each hospital were extracted and examined through the management panel and individual interviews, and finally implementation solutions were presented.

 Hospital "A" is relatively prepared in terms of human resources, rapid identification and infection control; Hospital "B" was relatively prepared in the fields of continuity of services, rapid identification, isolation and management of patients; Hospital "C" was also relatively prepared in the fields of information, human resources, rapid identification and infection control; They were fully prepared in other areas. Two hospitals "B and C" are at the level of full readiness and hospital "A" is at the border of full readiness and the overall level of readiness with 81% was estimated at the optimal level.

 Considering the optimal preparation of Khorram Abad hospitals in dealing with the crisis of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is necessary to train and allocate sufficient manpower to face future crises, and allocate budget to the program. Crisis preparedness, standard supply chain design and evaluation of crisis management programs should be given more attention.