Personal Protective Equipment Use Tracking Tools

The Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Burn Rate Calculator and NIOSH PPE Tracker mobile app can help healthcare and non-healthcare systems plan, optimize, and track their PPE inventory. Facilities can use these tools to calculate their average PPE consumption rate or “burn rate.” These tools estimate how many days a PPE supply will last given current inventory levels and PPE burn rate.

Personal Protective Equipment Burn Rate Calculator

To use the calculator, enter the number of full boxes of each type of PPE in stock (gowns, gloves, surgical masks, respirators, and face shields, for example) and the total number of patients at your facility, if applicable. If you do not need to calculate the amount of PPE used at your facility per patient, leave “patients” row blank. The tool will calculate the average consumption rate, also referred to as a “burn rate,” for each type of PPE entered in the spreadsheet. This information can then be used to estimate how long the remaining supply of PPE will last, based on the average consumption rate. Using the calculator can help your facility make order projections for future needs.

System Requirements

  • Windows* operating system (MS Windows 2000 or newer)
  • Microsoft Excel (MS Office 2000 or newer)
  • 486 Pentium processor and at least 128MB RAM
  • 2 MB of hard drive storage space

*MS Windows and Office is a copyrighted product produced by Microsoft Corporation, based in Redmond, WA. Use of trade names and commercial sources is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Instructions for Downloading

Before loading and starting the PPE Burn Rate Calculator, you may need to change Excel’s security level. To do so:

  1. Open a blank Excel spreadsheet.
  2. Click Tools and then click Macro, choose Security.
  3. Set Security Level to Medium.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Double-click and open PPE Burn Rate Calculator file.
  6. When asked to Disable Macros or Enable Macros, click Enable Macros.

Downloading the File

We recommend downloading and saving the PPE Burn Rate Calculator spreadsheet to your computer before opening the spreadsheet. Taking this step will open the spreadsheet in Excel rather than your web browser.