Exhibit 1. Regional Surge Capacity: Critical Benchmarks Related to Facilities and Equipment

Critical Benchmark 1: Hospital Bed Capacity

Establish a system that allows the triage, treatment, and initial stabilization of 500 adult and pediatric patients per 1,000,000 awardee jurisdictions (1:2000) above the current daily staffed bed capacity, who have acute illnesses or trauma requiring hospitalization from a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive incident.

Critical Benchmark 2: Isolation Capacity

Upgrade or maintain airborne infectious disease isolation capacity to have at least one negative pressure, high efficiency particle arrestor (HEPA)-filtered isolation facility per awardee. Such facilities must be able to support the initial evaluation and treatment of 10 adult and pediatric patients at a time who have a clinical contagious syndrome suggestive of smallpox, plague, or hemorrhagic fever, prior to movement to a definitive isolation facility.

Critical Benchmark 3: Health Care Personnel

Establish a response system that allows the immediate deployment of additional health care personnel in support of surge bed capacity noted in Critical Benchmark No. 2.1. The number of health care personnel must be linked to already established patient care ratios noted by the awardee's Patient Care Practice Acts based on 24-hour operations. This benchmark must describe how these personnel are recruited, received, processed, and managed through the incident.

Critical Benchmark 6: Personal Protective Equipment

Each awardee must ensure adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) per awardee-defined region to protect current and additional health care personnel during a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incident.

Critical Benchmark 7: Decontamination

Ensure that adequate portable or fixed decontamination systems exist for managing adult and pediatric patients as well as health care personnel who have been exposed during a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive incident in accordance with the numbers associated with Critical Benchmarks No. 2.1 and No. 2.3. All decontamination assets must be based on the number of patients/providers that can be decontaminated hourly. The awardee should plan to be able to decontaminate all patients and providers within 3 hours from the onset of the event.

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