Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Hospital Incident Command System; Findings from a Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE: To examine all aspects affecting the functioning of the system and the most important factors in its assessment through a systematic review during 1990 to 2017. METHODS: This systematic review of the current literature study was conducted during July 2017, and all articles, books, guidelines, manuals and dissertations pertaining to the Incident Command System were analyzed. A total of articles and relevant documents were identified and finally these articles, which we found, were analyzed based on the specified indicators. RESULTS: In this research 992 articles and relevant documents were identified and eventually, 48 articles were included and analyzed. The results were categorized into 6 main groups including 65 subgroups and 221 variables: features of hospital incident command system (14 subgroups and 53 variables), strengths of the system (15 subgroups and 70 variables), weaknesses of the system (10 subgroups and 15 variables), factors influencing the system's performance improvement (12 subgroups and 42 variables), factors that reduce the effectiveness of system include 11 subgroups (10 internal factors and 1 external factor) and 22 variables and important factors in assessing system performance (2 sub-groups and 19 variables). CONCLUSION: According to the results, Evaluating the effectiveness of a hospital accident command system (HICS) in a valid method can improve the efficiency of this system. In this appraisal, hospital managers and health decision-makers should consider principles, characteristics, strengths and weakness of it.