In a mass casualty incident, healthcare coalitions (HCCs) need to understand their capacity to accommodate the incident from both the conventional (usual) and contingency or crisis (surge) capacity perspectives. The aggregate of this data can provide critical information about the capacities of the HCC’s acute care hospitals and allow prediction about whether a given incident will overwhelm the local beds available and how much outside support may be required.
The Healthcare Coalition Surge Estimator Tool (and accompanying Data Collection Form; both available in Excel) concentrate on key measures that represent conventional and contingency capacity, with the understanding that crisis standards of care may be required when these are insufficient. The information is submitted by each hospital to their HCC for aggregation for use in local, state, and federal planning. Individual hospital data is not submitted to ASPR.
