Medical Surge Plan
Medical Surge is the capability to rapidly expand the capacity of the existing healthcare system in response to an increased patient volume that would otherwise severely challenge or exceed the current capacity of the facility. It applies to many types of events such as the day-to-day acute, temporary demand for services as well as the response to emergent events such as mass casualty incidents, infectious disease outbreaks, or natural disasters resulting in injury/illness.
The Medical Surge Plan Annex is a planning document that augments the hospital’s existing Emergency Operations Plan and incorporates the fundamental principles of all-hazards emergency management. The Medical Surge Annex establishes policy for creating internal and external surge capabilities and applies to all hospital staff in all organizational components and describes how the facility prepares for and manages the various key aspects of a medical surge operation. Strategies outlined in this annex will provide the hospital with options that promote institutional resiliency to respond to an event that results in a rapid patient influx or a sustained patient surge.
OVERVIEW
DETAILS
ADDITIONAL INFO
OVERVIEW
The hospital forms a cross-functional, multi-disciplinary planning team that can be actively engaged for the duration of the project. The Medical Surge Plan Annex development process leverages a self-directed proprietary medical surge planning template supported by DQE through a series of web-based conference calls and that focus on:
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Expansion of emergency department, outpatient services, and inpatient areas to accommodate an influx of patients
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Adjustment of personnel assignments to maximize patient care services
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Rapid discharge of existing patients
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Degradation of services
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Altered standards of care
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Alternate care site operations
DETAILS
The Hospital Medical Surge Plan Annex addresses:
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Mitigation measures, preparedness activities, response actions, and recovery strategies
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Plan Activation Criteria and Advanced Preparations Actions (general, internal and external surge)
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Incident Management and Surge Operations Procedures
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Customized agreements, protocols and documentation forms to include:
- External Support Agreements
- Altered Standards of Care
- Strategies to Enhance Surge Capacity
- Degradation of Services
- Rapid Discharge Protocol
- Internal Bed Expansion/Non-Traditional use of space
- Alternate Care Site Operations
- Job Action Sheets
- ESF #8 Support Activities