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 Added 2023.04.27         Hospitals.  Mass Casualty Hospital Capacity Expansion Toolkit

Why is this Toolkit Needed? Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) generally occur without warning. A concise, scalable surge response template can be a helpful quick reference to the hospital personnel tasked with expanding care capacity in the first hours of an incident and can minimize ad hoc and potentially conflicting decisions about prioritization of space and strategies. Hospital leadership can complete this toolkit as paper or electronic quick-reference templates for use by the emergency department (ED), nursing supervisors, and other leaders during an incident. This toolkit can help staff take actions specific to capacity expansion tailored to the scope of the incident (e.g., “If I need to accommodate 40 casualties, 20 of whom need ICU care, what are my best options?”)

What is Included in this Toolkit? This optional toolkit includes four sections to guide ED, general inpatient, and critical care space expansion and basic additional staffing needs in the event of patient surge. The toolkit is designed around MCIs and trauma/critical care incidents that require a reactive, rapid response as opposed to those that evolve more slowly (e.g., an infectious disease outbreak) or with warning (e.g., hurricane) that can be addressed proactively over time. The four sections include color-coded templates to reflect conventional (green), contingency (yellow), and crisis (red) operations that can help users prioritize the optimal initial and sequential strategies for a surge of patients based on available resources.1 Each section includes text regarding key additional actions or considerations that should be addressed to ensure appropriate use of the toolkit.