Clinical Resources

The following resources are intended for clinician use when providing care during a public health emergency.

Reports and Guidance

• Altered Standards of Care in Mass Casualty Events
  • This AHRQ report is a summary of findings that emerged from experts’ discussion of the provision of health and medical care in a mass casualty event.  It also includes recommendations for action that could be undertaken to support planning an effective response to a mass casualty event.
• Communicating with the Hearing Impaired during an Emergency
  • The American with Disabilities Act Business Brief outlines guidance regarding communicating with people who are deaf or hard of hearing in hospital settings during a public health emergency.   
• Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster (Critical Care Collaborative)
  • This series of articles, written by the Task Force on Mass Critical Care provides recommendations for medical equipment, concepts to expand treatment spaces, and staffing models to prepare for emergency mass critical care. These consensus suggestions were derived from published clinical practice guidelines and medical resource utilization data for the everyday critical care conditions anticipated to predominate during mass critical care events.
• IOM Crisis Standards of Care Report
  • This report developed by the Board on Health Sciences and Policy and the Institute of Medicine focuses on articulating current concepts and guidance that can assist state and local public health officials, healthcare facilities, and professionals in the development of systematic and comprehensive policies and protocols for crisis standards of care in disasters where resources are scarce.
• Pandemic Influenza Planning Guide for Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) 
  • Developed by HHS to identify important, specific activities MRC units can undertake to prepare for pandemic influenza, and other public health emergency.
• Surge Hospitals: Providing Safe Care in Emergencies 
  • This Joint Commission guide provides information to healthcare planners at the community, state, and federal level on definitions of surge hospitals, the kind of planning they require, how they can be set up, and who should be responsible for their establishment and operation.

Tools

• Optimizing Surge Capacity: Hospital Assessment and Planning 
  • This AHRQ issue brief discusses tools that can assist hospitals and other healthcare facilities with an assessment of their current capacity and develop a plan to achieve optimal surge capacity 
• Pandemic Influenza Toolkit
  • o    This CDC developed tool is intended to help clinical staff discuss pandemic influenza with patients and provide appropriate care.
• Pediatric Disaster Toolkit: Hospital Guidelines for Pediatrics in Disasters
  • This tool developed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene provide hospitals, especially those that do not normally admit children and for hospitals that do admit children but do not have pediatric intensive care services, with useful planning strategies and tools for providing protection, treatment, and acute care for pediatric patients during a disaster.
• Reopening Shuttered Hospitals to Expand Surge Capacity 
  • AHRQ has provided this tool to help public health officials, and hospital and health facility staff determine in advance how to best choose and use a formerly closed hospital or health facility to care for patients.
• Surge Capacity: Facilities and Equipment 
  • o    AHRQ designed this tool to help state, local, and health system policymakers explore key issues, research findings, and strategies for the use of facilities and equipment to enhance hospital surge capacity.
• Teaming up for Emergency Preparedness: How to Create a Partnership between Your Public Health Agency and Area Hospitals   (347 KB/3 pages)
  • This tip sheet developed by Advanced Practice Centers describes a nine step process to creating a partnership between a local public health agency and area hospitals.
• Triage and Community Healthcare Decision Tools for Pandemic Influenza
  • Community tools offered by the University of Minnesota to help triage patients with influenza-like illness, provide the appropriate level of care, and determine appropriate sites of care during an influenza pandemic.

Other Resources

• Addressing Surge Capacity in a Mass Casualty Event
  • This web-assisted audio teleconference by AHRQ is designed to help state, local, and health system policymakers explore key issues, research findings, and to strategize for the use of facilities and equipment to enhance a hospitals’ surge capacity .
• CDC's Clinician Outreach & Communication Activity (COCA)
  • Designed to provide two-way communication between clinicians and CDC about emerging health threats, such as pandemics, natural disasters, and terrorism. 
• Weapons of Mass Destruction, Emergency Management, and Medical Web Sites   (649 KB/64 pages)
  • A comprehensive list of internet sites developed by the Yale New Haven Health System for Weapons of Mass Destruction for medical emergency planning.