OBJECTIVES A mass casualty incident (MCI) may strain a health care system beyond surge capacity, affecting patterns of care for casualties and other patients. Prior studies of MCIs have assessed clinical care for casualty patients, but have not examined outcomes or expenditures for noncasualty inpatients in the same time period. METHODS This was a retrospective analysis of administrative hosp...

For more than a decade, emergency medicine (EM) organizations have produced guidelines, training, and leadership for disaster management. However, to date there have been limited guidelines for emergency physicians (EPs) needing to provide a rapid response to a surge in demand. The aim of this project was to identify strategies that may guide surge management in the emergency department (ED). A...

BACKGROUND There are no standardized measures of hospital disaster preparedness or hospital "surge capacity." OBJECTIVES To characterize disaster preparedness among a cohort of hospitals in Los Angeles County, focusing on practice variation, plan characteristics, and surge capacity. METHODS This was a descriptive, cross-sectional survey study, followed by on-site verification. Forty-five 9-...

INTRODUCTION Surge capacity for optimization of access to hospital beds is a limiting factor in response to catastrophic events. Medical facilities, communication tools, manpower, and resource reserves exist to respond to these events. However, these factors may not be optimally functioning to generate an effective and efficient surge response. The objective was to improve the function of these...