Continuity Management The Palestinian Health Care Sector

Business Continuity Management (BCM) is fairly considered a new area of management. It has emerged to minimize and, in many cases, to avert the damaging consequences on businesses when disasters, that will surely strike vast majority of businesses at one time or another, do actually strike. According to some analysts specialized in Palestinian affairs, after handling Palestinian health sector over to Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994, Israel bet on collapse of this sector in a maximum period of three months. Unexpectedly, a considerably sweeping rehabilitation has been accomplished. However, as more challenging risks have increasingly become prevalent, sustainable rehabilitation has considerably become out of reach. Sustainability remains a dream for people in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and a nightmare for policy developer and implementer alike. Accordingly, developing a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) for Palestinian Ministry Of Health (PMOH) has become a necessity that must be seriously taken by top management at this ministry. This research is an attempt to satisfiy this necessity; it aims at preparing a BCP for the largest provider of health services in OPT; Ministry Of Health (MOH). However, this research starts with reviewing relevant researches and studies on two main concepts; BCM and health systems. This is followed by conducting a number of interviews, documents collection, as well as making observations to sustain the research’s findings. For this research, a "framework for action" drawn by World Health Organization (WHO) for implementation is considered the cornerstone. Its different "building blocks" are thouroughly analyzed using the thematic approach in order to reveal all risks encounter performance of MOH. However, it is confessed that vast majority of previous researches lucubrate in problems outlining while they brief when talking about solutions. Therefore, this research elaborates solutions as well as an analysis of the problem; it suggests a set of mitigation strategies. This is provided within the suggested continuity plan. This plan includes theoretical as well as practical phases that together are depicted through a framework presented by this research. Moreover, recommendations and suggestions for future researches are introduced. The output of this research is considered to have a great importance to MOH by helping it in providing safer, more sustained and high quality health services. In addition, it is considered beneficial to all parties that are interested in health system in OPT. Finally, it is hoped that this research would build awareness about this field of management and its importance.