Surge

Hospital Surge Evaluation Tool

Mass casualty events happen at any time and from many different causes. Public Health Emergency (PHE), from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, developed the Hospital Surge Evaluation Tool for use to determine a facility’s ability to manage such an event. The PHE website describes it as “Surge Evaluation in a Box.”

The tool uses a no-notice drill to help determine how competent a hospital’s preparedness training and planning are and provides hospital emergency managers a way to hold tabletop exercises regularly. The tool includes:

• A Command Center Component – requiring incident command leaders and staff to assess hospital capabilities;
• An Emergency Department Component – a physician and nurse are asked to triage a list of patients presenting. This runs concurrently with the command component;
• A “Hotwash” discussion at the conclusion to go over the exercise.

PHE lists the technical requirements for using the tool on their website. In addition, all the electronic files, which are in MS Word, MS Excel, and Adobe Acrobat, are available for download for PC and Apple systems.
(Source: PHE)

HPP Surge Evaluation Tool