Personal Protective Equipment, Decontamination, Isolation/Quarantine, and Laboratory Capacity
Evidence-based, best-practice models for each of these areas are now available in Development
of Models for Emergency Preparedness,
a new resource from AHRQ. These emergency preparedness models can help
health care professionals plan for and respond to bioterrorism events
or public health emergencies.
Go to: /research/devmodels/ to download the report.
Standardized Hospital Bed Definitions
These newly released hospital bed definitions can provide uniform
terminology for organizations tracking the availability of beds in the
aftermath of an emergency or natural disaster. The standardized
definitions allow hospital systems and emergency responders seeking
beds victims to speak the same language. Until now, definitions have
varied among systems and even among hospitals.
Go to: /research/havbed/definitions.htm to
access the definitions.
The Emergency Preparedness Resource Inventory (EPRI)
This tool allows local or regional planners to assemble an inventory
of critical resources such as equipment, personnel, and supplies that
are useful in responding to a public health disaster. The EPRI tool can
be customized to create an inventory appropriate for any region, State,
or locality. It is Web-based so that all selected organizations in an
area can enter information about their resources. It creates automated
reports for use in preparedness and planning as well as incident
response. EPRI also has extensive security protections. In addition to
a Web-based software tool, EPRI includes an Implementation Report, a
Technical Manual, and an Appendix.
Go to: /research/epri/index.html to download the tool and its components.
Reopening Shuttered Hospitals to Expand Surge Capacity
This new tool can help public health and hospital officials
determine how to best choose and use a formerly closed hospital or
health facility to care for patients. The tool includes a surge
capacity toolkit and a variety of checklists to guide planners in
setting up management teams, assessing facilities, choosing staff,
hiring security personnel, assessing readiness of medical equipment and
supplies, and arranging for patient transport services.
Go to: /research/shuttered/ to download the toolkit and checklists.
Recommendations for Altered Standards of Care During a Mass Casualty Event
This report, from an expert panel convened in August 2004 by AHRQ
and the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, notes
that it is critical to adjust current heath and medical care standards
to ensure that the care provided in a mass casualty event results in
saving as many lives as possible.
Go to: /research/altstand/ to view the report.
Alternate Site Locator
The Rocky Mountain Regional Care Model for Bioterrorist Events is a
tool to help State and local officials quickly locate alternate health
care sites if hospitals are overwhelmed by patients due to a public
health emergency such as a bioterrorist attack. The alternate care site
selection tool is designed to allow regional planners to locate and
rank potential alternative sites—stadiums, schools, recreation centers,
motels, and other venues—based on whether they have adequate
ventilation, plumbing, food supply and kitchen facilities, and other
factors.
Go to: /research/altsites.htm to
download the tool.
Computer Staffing Model for Disaster Preparedness Response
This computer model can help hospitals and health systems plan
antibiotic dispensing and vaccination campaigns to respond to
large-scale natural disease outbreaks or localized episodes. This
resource is the Nation's first computerized staffing model that is
downloadable as a spreadsheet or accessible as a Web-based version. It
can be used to calculate the specific needs of local health care
systems based on the number of staff they have and the number of
patients they would need to treat quickly in a public health emergency.
Go to: /research/biomodel.htm to download the tool.
Health Emergency Assistance Line and Triage Hub (HEALTH) Model
This tool is designed to help planners develop a public health
emergency contact center that is highly integrated with public health
agencies. The tool helps to minimize surges in patient demand on the
health care delivery system during a public health emergency such as
Hurricane Katrina. The report helps planners determine the
requirements, specifications, and resources needed for developing an
emergency contact center and has a companion Contact Center Assessment
Tool Set, which helps officials calculate the number of people who may
try to reach a public health agency during an emergency event.
Go to: /research/health/ to download the tool.
Additional Information
For additional information and resources that are part of AHRQ's public health preparedness response portfolio, go to: /prep/
For the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' portfolio on disaster response and public health emergencies, go to: http://www.hhs.gov/emergency/
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