Within the secondary impacts of electricity blackouts, it is necessary to pay attention
to facilities providing medical care for the population, namely the hospitals. Hospitals
represent a key position in the provision of health care also in times of crisis. These
facilities must provide constant care; it is therefore essential that the preparedness of such
facilities is kept at a high level. The basic aim of this article is to analyse the preparedness
of hospitals to power outages (power failures, blackouts) within a pilot study. On that
basis, a SWOT analysis is used to determine strengths and weaknesses of the system of
preparedness of hospitals to power outages and solutions for better security of hospitals
are defined. The sample investigated consists of four hospitals founded by the Regional
Authority (hospitals Nos. 1-4) and one hospital founded by the Ministry of Health of the
Czech Republic (hospital No. 5). The results of the study shows that most weaknesses of
the preparedness of hospitals are represented by inadequately addressed reserves of fuel
for the main backup power supply, poor knowledge of employees who are insufficiently
retrained, and old backup power supplies (even 35 years in some cases)