The Healthcare Medical Surge Best Practices Library
Equity
Promoting Health Equity in Resource Constrained Events (2022)
Quick Summary: This document developed by Oregon Health Authority outlines principles in promoting health equity during resource constrained events. The planning process resulted in a new and inclusive process with the goal of developing revised crisis care guidance centered on heath equity. The document is primarily focused around COVID but may of the principles identified should be considered in medical surge planning.
Real World Lessons Learned
A Day Like No Other- Las Vegas Mass Shooting (2018)
Quick Summary: This report provides supplemental hospital emergency management educational material via the case study.
Surge Capacity Logistics (2014)
Quick Summary: This journal article describes strategic planning from a systems perspective and includes focused intensive care abilities and requirements.
Bracing for the Storm: One Health Care System’s Planning for COVID-19 Surge
Quick Summary: This report covers a rapid transition of a health care system to account for projected aCOVID-19 and usual patient care, while balancing patient and staff safety and conservation of resources.
Planning
Regional Medical Surge Plan Healthcare Preparedness Coalition of Utah/ Wasatch Counties
Quick Summary: This document describes the surge plan utilized by counties in Utah. It outlines the various aspects that inform the regions medical surge plan in emergency situations.
California DPH Hospital Surge Planning Volume 1: Hospitals (2007)
Quick Summary: This document is a healthcare surge planning standards and guidelines manual developed by California Department of Public Health. The manual was developed to assist healthcare providers develop plans for responding to a healthcare surge. The manual contains strategies, checklists, incident command considerations and many more tools for planning.
LA County Healthcare Surge Planning Guide (2017)
Quick Summary: This all-hazards surge guide identifies key operational steps and coordinated strategies for sectors across the healthcare system spectrum to meet the healthcare needs of the community during a medical surge related to any disaster.
Regional Medical Surge Plan, HCC of Utah/Wasatch Counties
Quick Summary: This healthcare coalition medical surge plan defines how health care and related organizations within the region will work together to prevent, mitigate, respond to and recover from a disaster of any origin.
Quick Summary: This document is intended to provide guidance in the use of Relief Healthcare Facilities (including Relief Hospitals and Relief Long-Term Acute Care Facilities and Relief Skilled Nursing Homes) and Alternate Care Sites (ACS). This guidance may change as resource availability and demands for healthcare services change. Please be alert for revisions.
Space
Quick Summary: Considerations for generating additional space in hospital planning efforts to prepare for a surge of patients. Considerations in this document assume the facility has converted rooms to semi-private as possible and is maximizing available inpatient space.
Staff
Quick Summary: As part of their no-notice incident planning, healthcare facilities should consider planning for specialty providers and other personnel to assume non-traditional roles to help address the surge in patients. In some cases, these personnel may be available to meet their traditional roles as well as supplement other critical activities. This tip sheet describes the non-traditional role some anesthesiologists assumed following the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. It also lists possible non-traditional roles other providers (e.g., pediatric) can assume in similar incidents.
Creating a Caring Workforce Culture: Practical Approaches for Hospital Executives
Quick Summary: This resource highlights workforce challenges that have emerged during COVID-19 and provides concrete practical approaches that hospital management and executives have utilized during COVID surges to support and retain their workforce. This resource provides common practices that can inform hospital management and executives in workforce retention and resilience strategies.
Health Workforce Baseline and Surge Ratios (2022)
Quick Summary: This is a HealthForce Center at UCSF rapid response resource and is a living document last updated March 21, 2020. This document reflects the best available literature, when possible, and crowd sourced information. This list is limited to an abbreviated list of health workers supporting direct patient care and is not intended to be comprehensive of all team members or all settings.
Healthcare Provider Shortages: Resources and Strategies for Meeting Demand (2021)
Quick Summary: This document identifies resources and strategies that decision makers can use to optimize healthcare workforce assets, assess ongoing staffing needs, and identify resources to meet those needs.
Tips for Retaining and Caring for Staff after a Disaster
Quick Summary: This document summarizes various tips for taking care of staff after an emergency situation in order to remain operational while ensure staffing needs are met, both in terms of immediate needs and short-term needs.
Helping the Helpers: Building Responder Resilience
Quick Summary: This document discusses potential mental and behavioral health obstacles that first responders may face during a disaster and provides links to information and suggestions of how to provide support.
Stuff
Patient Care Strategies for Scarce Resource Situations (2021)
Quick Summary: This document covers strategies for managing scarce resources during disasters. Strategies are further broken down by capacity levels of conventional, contingency and crisis. This resource is designed to help hospitals and healthcare faci8lities identify surge capacity strategies for their planning initiatives.
Quick Summary: This document outlines recommendations and provides an assessment template surrounding large scale, rapid patient discharge in order to make room for incoming patients.
Quick Summary: This study was conducted to analyze the surge capacities, at a few hospitals, to determine any potential adjustments and benefits of reverse triage. What was found, through the analysis of various variables, was that if appropriately used reverse triage for the purposes of early discharge can positively contribute to the potential surge capacity in emergency situations.
Reverse Triage to create hospital surge capacity (2018)
Quick Summary: This report analyses the impact of reverse triage to rapidly assess the need for continuing inpatient care and to expedite patient discharge to create surge capacity for disaster victims.
Making Telehealth Flexibilities Permanent
Quick Summary: This fact sheet represents what actions would be necessary to maintain or ext3end telehealth flexibilities that were implemented during the COVID-19 public health emergency.