Hospital INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM (HICS) has been established with the mission of prevention, response, and recovery in hazards. Regarding the key role of hospitals in medical management of events, the present study is aimed at investigating benefits, barriers, and limitations of applying HICS in hospital. Employing a review study, articles related to the aforementioned subject published from 1995 to 2016 were extracted from accredited websites and databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Elsevier, and SID by searching keywords such as HICS, benefits, barriers, and limitations. Then, those articles were summarized and reported. Using of HICS can cause creating preparedness in facing disasters, constructive management in strategies of controlling events, and disasters. Therefore, experiences indicate that there are some limitations in the SYSTEM such as failure to assess the strength and severity of vulnerabilities of hospital, no observation of standards for disaster management in the design, constructing and equipping hospitals, and the absence of a model for evaluating the SYSTEM. Accordingly, the conducted studies were investigated for probing the performance HICS. With regard to the role of health in disaster management, it requires advanced international methods in facing disasters. Using accurate models for assessing, the investigation of preparedness of hospitals in precrisis conditions based on components such as COMMAND, communications, security, safety, development of action plans, changes in staff’s attitudes through effective operational training and exercises and creation of required maneuvers seems necessary.

Background: Hospital and prehospital emergencies are the first lines of coping and dealing with emergencies as well as emerging crises of special status. Developing and improving the readiness of these centers is considered as the main component for success in the universities of Medical Sciences. This study aimed to assess the preparedness of the INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM in Qom hospitals, Qom City, Iran. Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was conducted on 120 senior managers, nursing directors, administrative and financial members of the Crisis Committee of 7 hospitals in Qom. The obtained data were collected using the standard disaster preparedness questionnaire with 4 domains. The researcher collected the study data through observation, interview, and review of the committee’ s documents. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS V. 20 using descriptiveanalytical statistics, such as mean, standard deviation, and independent t-test. Results: The mean knowledge scores of supervisors and members of the Disaster Management Committee were 14. 51 and 14. 62, respectively, which was not significantly different (P = 0. 486). In addition, the mean attitude scores of the supervisors and members of the Committee were 69. 66 and 70. 70, respectively, which was not significantly significant (P = 0. 437). Regarding practice, the mean scores of the practice of the supervisors and members were 9. 62 and 12. 0, respectively, which was significantly different (P = 0. 045). Conclusion: Proper management of crises is achievable by organizing, coordinating, and strengthening all members of the crisis team.

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.

Dear Editor, Bahrami et al. published an interesting article entitled “ Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Hospital INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM; Findings from a SYSTEMatic Review” [1]; it seems that this SYSTEMatic review, as many other review published, do not pay proper attention to the reporting: 1. Data Sources Springer which is an academic publisher and it could be considered as the sources to search, therefore, should not be included in searched databases. Again, Google Scholar is a search engine. It will be better for researchers to specify which one is a database and which one is a publisher, search engine and etc [2]. . .