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Healthcare Facility Expansion Assistance
Topic Collection
April 20, 2022

Topic Collection: Healthcare Facility Expansion Assistance

Recent COVID-19 surges and potential future surges involving the emergence of COVID-19 Variants of Concern (VOC) or Variants of High Consequence (VOHC) will likely cause varying illness severity among both unvaccinated and fully vaccinated individuals. These surges will potentially increase hospitalizations, particularly among unvaccinated individuals, and significantly impact healthcare facilities’ (HCF) space availability. The Federal Government will assist States, Tribes, and Territories (STT) and eligible HCFs interested in temporarily expanding their existing facilities to treat COVID-19 patients and prepare for future surges across the Nation. In order to reinvigorate existing HCF Public Assistance efforts, the Federal Government is assisting STT and HCFs to fully understand federal support opportunities for expanding capability and capacity to meet requirements for potential COVID-19 patient surges over the first six months of 2022.

The resources in this interagency collection focus on describing the federal resources available to assist STT and HFC expand and/or reconfigure hospital spaces and establish resilient systems.  Additionally this collection will provide information on other considerations such as physical space, data and information, supply chain and resource management, standards of care, staffing, and other system level considerations (e.g. MOCC, telehealth, and equity).

NOTE: Resources that appear in more than one category are marked with an asterisk.

Please refer to the National Institutes of Health Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines and CDC's Coronavirus webpage for the most up-to-date clinical guidance on managing COVID-19.

 

Data and Information


This Topic Collection focuses on information and peer-reviewed resources to inform COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts. Resources include data visualizations, literature collections, resource databases, and other curated collections of information for specific stakeholder groups.
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on legal and regulatory authorities.
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HHS Protect Public Data Hub. (2021). Hospital Utilization. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This webpage displays data visualizations on the current and historic utilization and capacity status of U.S. hospitals registered with Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services.
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Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. (2021). COVID-19 Long Range Modeling Scenarios. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
These scenarios-based, long-term projections (6-months) of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths for planning purposes are updated monthly and available on request from ASPRMOD@hhs.gov.
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Hospital Expansion (Physical)


This tip sheet summarizes the funding available through various sources to establish and operationalize alternate care sites.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA Response includes several plans for key recommendations for ACS staffing (and typical skilled nursing facility staffing for comparison).
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  • Audrey Mazurek Thank you Ms. Mitchell for your comment. ASPR TRACIE recently responded to a technical assistance request related to ACS sources of additional staff and we included your comment below in that response: https://files.asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/aspr-tracie-ta---covid-19-acs-sources-of-additional-staff.pdf.
    4/2/2020 5:11:07 PM
  • Megan Mitchell I don't understand how large groups of available practitioners are being left out of these plans. The physical therapist is qualified to mobilize patient, deep suction, teach and train in breathing strategies, strength train and most importantly get patient functional enough to return home. We are not going to have enough of any one discipline to cover both hospital systems let alone additional off-site locations. We need to include everyone who has useful skills.
    3/31/2020 9:03:03 AM
This ASPR TRACIE TA response document includes comments from ASPR TRACIE Subject Matter Expert Cadre members and resources related to potential sources for additional staffing for an ACS.
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Throughout the spring of 2020, COVID-19 ravaged the City of New York. State and city authorities worked with the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to create an alternate care site where healthcare providers could solely treat COVID-19 patients. ASPR TRACIE met with several members of the federal medical teams deployed to the Javits Center to learn more about their experience.
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ASPR TRACIE met with the joint leadership team from the Baltimore (MD) Convention Center Field Hospital (BCCFH), a joint effort to establish an alternate care site (ACS) created to help manage the patient surge from the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study highlights their experiences standing up and maintaining this ACS and includes challenges and considerations by category in the hopes that the information can be helpful to stakeholders engaged in similar planning and response efforts.
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on the establishment and operation of Alternate Care Sites.
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The speaker in this short webinar describes an alternate care site and a federal medical station, and explains resources and steps for standing up these resources.
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Between September 9, 2020 and October 20, 2020, the ASPR TRACIE team interviewed decision makers and lead physicians at four designated COVID-19 hospitals. The interviews focused on the facilities’ decision-making processes, operations and logistics (space, staff, stuff), and general lessons learned. These facilities were already operational or existing hospitals; they were not “Alternate Care Sites.” Additionally, the entire facility was designated to solely treat COVID-19 positive patients; all other patients were transferred or directed to nearby hospitals.
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Speakers discuss funding options for establishing ACSs, the operation and ongoing administration of ACS, and for direct patient care costs.
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The use of telehealth has increased exponentially in response to COVID-19. Many hospitals have scrambled to add tablets to their inventory, facilitating patient communication with both loved ones and healthcare providers. Dr. Paul Biddinger, Medical Director for Emergency Preparedness at Mass General Brigham and Director of the Center for Disaster Medicine (Massachusetts General Hospital), Juan Estrada, Senior Director for Telehealth Consults at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Lee Schwamm, Vice President of Virtual Care at Mass General Brigham shared how staff have adjusted to this new method of healthcare delivery and how lessons learned are being incorporated in near real time.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated community mitigation efforts enacted have altered the delivery of and access to healthcare across the U.S. Healthcare providers are looking for new and innovative ways to deliver patient care to accommodate social distancing and community mitigation measures. The use of telemedicine has grown significantly in recent months. In addition to being used by outpatient providers, telemedicine plays an integral role in Alternate Care Sites (ACS). ACS are one of many alternate care strategies intended to provide additional hospital surge capacity and capability. HHS ASPR and ASPR TRACIE hosted this webinar where speakers discussed operations, management, and lessons learned from using telemedicine in these settings.
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Some healthcare providers and systems have been providing hospital-level care in patient’s homes for years; others have implemented acute care delivery at home models in response to overcrowding at hospitals due to COVID-19. This tip sheet provides an overview of characteristics of various types of acute care delivery at home programs to help healthcare providers better understand this care model.
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Erica Kuhlmann, DO, COVID ICU Medical Director, M Health Fairview (MN) shares how her facility made history when it became one of the nation’s first, and only, hospitals dedicated solely to treating people with severe, confirmed cases of COVID-19.
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Many hospitals were not built to treat the significant patient surges of COVID-positive patients. These resources focus on updating old and creating new spaces to accommodate patients with specific symptoms while keeping staff as safe as possible, sanitizing rooms and common areas, tracking patients in new/reconfigured spaces, and ensuring public safety in healthcare facilities during a pandemic.
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This section of the Hospital Operations Toolkit for COVID-19 describes ways hospitals have modified their infrastructure to accommodate patient surge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response includes information and links to resources related to increasing hospital bed capacity by utilizing existing space within institutions/health systems.
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COVID-19 challenged every aspect of healthcare facilities across the country. From patient care to engineering, environmental health & safety, public safety, and food & nutrition—every department and specialty was affected somehow by the virus. ASPR TRACIE interviewed Michael Fiore, CIH, Corporate Senior Director for Environmental Health and Safety and Clinical Operations for NorthShore University HealthSystem in Illinois. In this role, he oversees the environment of care, including nonclinical areas that support clinical operations that promote a safe, comfortable and healing environment.
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Denver Health is a Level 1 Trauma Center and Urban Safety Net hospital with 550 beds and nine federally qualified community health centers located throughout the city. Before the pandemic, the hospital had 227 adult medical surgery/critical care beds, 47 were intensive care unit (ICU)-level beds, and 12 were intermediate care beds. They ran near or at capacity and often experienced adult emergency department boarding. Patrick Ryan, MD, MPH, and Connie Savor Price, MD (from Denver Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine) shared their experiences creating the “Virtual Hospital at Home” model to manage the significant surge in COVID-19 patients in the fall of 2020.
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ASPR TRACIE. (2022). Considerations for the Use of Temporary Care Surge Sites for Managing Seasonal Patient Surge. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.
This document describes the major considerations healthcare facility emergency planners must account for when determining patient surge management solutions for longer-duration events, such as weeks to months of managing seasonal illness surge. The term "surge site" is used to describe a non-patient care area either inside the walls of the facility or a site immediately adjacent such as a tent, trailer, or other mobile and temporary facility.
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2021). COVID-19 Emergency Declaration Blanket Waivers for Health Care Providers.
CMS is empowered to take proactive steps to rapidly expand the Administration’s efforts against COVID-19 through both 1135 waivers as well as authority under section 1812(f) of the Social Security Act (the Act). As a result, the blanket waivers listed in this document are in effect through the end of the emergency declaration, with a retroactive effective date of March 1, 2020.
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Federal Healthcare Resilience Task Force. (2020). Alternate Care Site (ACS) Toolkit: Third Edition.
This Toolkit was developed to help state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) entities to address potential shortages in medical facilities during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. It is intended to provide technical assistance to SLTT entities in establishing and operationalizing Alternate Care Sites (ACS).
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  • Bridget Kanawati Thank you for your additional comments and we have sent them to the ACS Task Force.
    4/13/2020 4:23:51 PM
  • Matthew Tybor Considerations for the law enforcement section: If the ACS site is planning to accept patients from the respective Department of Corrections.
    4/13/2020 3:37:19 PM
  • Bridget Kanawati Thank you for your feedback on the Toolkit. We have passed your suggestions on to the ACS Task Force for consideration.
    4/11/2020 10:31:18 AM
  • Matthew Tybor This document was helpful. For communicating at a higher level accomplishments and problems with site development I would consider breaking it down into four categories of Building the Site, Staffing the Site, Supplying the Site, and Sustaining the Site (BS3). I have found that using the BS3 during the planning process helps with collaboration with all applicable stakeholders.
    4/10/2020 2:18:47 PM
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. (2021). ECHO Clinical Rounds (September 23, 2021).
Participants in this clinical rounds teleconference discussed repurposing a pediatric intensive care unit for adult COVID-19 patients and vice versa.
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Staffing Models/Request Process


This ASPR TRACIE TA response document includes comments from ASPR TRACIE Subject Matter Expert Cadre members and resources related to potential sources for additional staffing for an ACS.
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on workforce resilience and sustainability.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response includes resources related to shortages of direct care workforce staff (personal care aides, home health aides, nursing assistants) due to COVID-19, and strategies for workforce recruitment and sustainment.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response includes links to training and other resources for non-ICU clinicians who may be pulled into working in an ICU during a COVID-19 hospital surge situation.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response provides resources on cross-training (or up-training) for nurses and other clinical staff to meet the needs of high acuity COVID-19 surge.
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This section of the Hospital Operations Toolkit for COVID-19 discusses options to increase hospital staffing while complying with licensing and credentialing requirements, providing appropriate training to staff in new roles, and ensuring staff safety.
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Patient care is a team effort, and COVID-19 emphasized the importance of collaboration among hospital allied and supportive care providers. This issue of The Exchange highlights: home care and hospice (including a virtual acute care delivery at home model); the role of allied healthcare providers (e.g., physical, occupational, and respiratory therapy); and engineering and environmental changes in response to the pandemic.
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During a pandemic or other emergency, healthcare facilities face significant challenges to quickly onboard additional healthcare providers when hospital admissions and ICU occupancy increase rapidly. This onboarding checklist can ensure new employees are compliant with administrative requirements, familiar with the mission and culture of the hospital, and understand expectations.
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Health care workforce planners can use the updated Health Care Provider Shortages document to help prevent staff shortages and meet the demand for additional staff during and after a disaster or public health emergency. Strategies for quantifying workforce needs and supporting, maximizing, and supplementing staff include lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This collection provides a curated set of resources and tools for decision-makers managing healthcare workforce challenges in response to the COVID-19 emergency.
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This resource builds upon prior consultation (issued on March 28, 2020) and focuses on Crisis Standards of Care and staffing needs--including deployment and allocation of expert clinical staff--to ensure the care of COVID-19 patients.
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Standards of Care


This ASPR TRACIE TA response provides an overview of crisis care and crisis standards of care for situations where there are scarce resources available to care for high numbers of patients. Patient surge management strategies at the individual facility and community level are discussed and links to resources for more information and to operationalize the strategies are provided throughout.
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on crisis standards of care (CSC).
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The resources on this page can help healthcare and emergency management planners prepare for surges of COVID-19 patients.
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This ASPR TRACIE Technical Assistance response covers Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) for infectious diseases.
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The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score was designed as a research tool so that groups of patients could be categorized based on their risk of death. This fact sheet includes an overview of the score, how it is calculated, and how it can be used in triage situations.
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This Resource Collection consolidates the contents of the COVID-19 Critical Care Surge, COVID-19 Emergency Department, and COVID-19 Hospital Triage/Screening Collections prior to January 2021. ASPR TRACIE combined those Collections to enable users to locate hospital-specific COVID-19 resources in one location.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response provides information on Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) terminology and legal guidance materials as it relates to CSC. It also includes comments from ASPR TRACIE SME Cadre members.
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COVID-19 patient surges have prompted healthcare facilities to be innovative in record time, updating and creating new plans as lessons were learned. In this article, ASPR TRACIE highlights how four healthcare executives from different states and settings collaborated and used data to manage patient surge statewide.
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This ASPR TRACIE tip sheet summarizes four healthcare executives’ experience with statewide patient surge management during COVID-19 and lessons learned gleaned from other resources. (Access the full report here: https://files.asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/innovations-in-covid-19-patient-surge-management-final-508.pdf)
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This resource includes links to quick sheets on crisis standards of care (CSC) considerations. Topics include principles of CSC, information for planners and healthcare providers, clinical allocation decisions, public messaging, and roles and responsibilities.
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2021). Coronavirus Waivers & Flexibilities.
This summary page provides a listing of all CMS waivers and flexibilities related to the current COVID-19 public health emergency, as well as topic-specific fact sheets and summary documents.
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COVID-19 Healthcare Resilience Working Group. (2020). Strategies for Managing a Surge in COVID-19 Cases.
This resource provides guidance to the state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) jurisdictions on how to enhance their healthcare capacities in response to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
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Hick, J., Hanfling, D., Wynia, M., and Toner E. (2021). Crisis Standards of Care and COVID-19: What Did We Learn? How Do We Ensure Equity? What Should We Do? (Added 8/30/2021.) National Academy of Medicine .
This discussion paper reviews some of the lessons learned related to crisis standards of care principles and practices during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies issues and action steps for the future.
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National Institutes of Health. (2020). Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines. (Added 4/21/2020.) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
A COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel developed these guidelines to assist clinicians caring for patients with COVID-19. Each of the recommendations in the frequently updated guidelines includes ratings of the strength of the recommendation and the quality of evidence supporting the recommendation.
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Supply Chain and Resource Management


This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on personal protective equipment (PPE).
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on the supply chain.
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This section of the Hospital Operations Toolkit for COVID-19 offers information on managing supplies and other resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses supply chain challenges, selection and acquisition strategies, inventory management, and preservation practices.
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This document provides an overview of the emergency planning and response considerations of healthcare supply chain owners, operators, and end users, as well as insights for healthcare coalitions (HCCs) working with healthcare supply chain partners on preparedness, response, and recovery. It aims to capture key changes during serious or catastrophic events, compared to normal supply chain operations, as well as planning and response contingencies.
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System Expansion (e.g., MOCC, EMAC, telemedicine)


Administration for Community Living. (2021). Administration for Community Living (ACL) COVID-19 Response.
This website provides an overview of the ACL COVID response to include tools and strategies to engage hard to reach community members.
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Administration for Community Living and Administration on Aging. (2021). Eldercare Locator.
This website provides information on various COVID-19 eldercare community resources and considerations for caregivers and health systems.
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This tip sheet describes the use of telehealth and how it has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the full report, access https://files.asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/aspr-tracie-covid-19-and-telehealth.pdf.
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In May 2020, ASPR TRACIE hosted the webinar COVID-19: Healthcare System Operations Strategies and Experiences to highlight pandemic response experiences from some of the hardest hit hospitals at the time. Commander Sara Jager, M.D., Chief Medical Officer with Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation (Arizona), shared her experiences from a tribal hospital that serves Navajo Nation; she updated some of the information from the webinar in July 2020.
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This Topic Collection focuses on plans, tools, templates, and other immediately implementable resources to help with COVID-19 preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts, focusing on telemedicine and virtual medical care.
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This webinar features speakers describing Medical Operations Coordination Cells (MOCCs), lessons learned from past experiences, and how MOCCs are being used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response includes links to response plans and planning documents for establishing a family assistance center (FAC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Imperial County, located in southeastern California, has a population of approximately 181,000, and shares borders with Arizona and Mexico. El Centro serves as the county seat, and the county’s economy is based primarily on agriculture. Two hospitals serve the county: El Centro Regional Medical Center and Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District. Imperial County has been a COVID-19 “hot spot,” and in May 2020, Mexicali’s hospitals reached capacity and announced that they would divert American patients to El Centro, creating a near-instant patient surge, and necessitating the movement of over 625 patients. This article details that process.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA Response discusses rural areas and how they are preparing for and managing residents who test positive for COVID-19.
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This ASPR TRACIE document highlights resources for healthcare system emergency preparedness planners and correctional facility workers to use while preparing for and responding to infectious disease outbreaks that may occur in prisons or jails. Considerations and lessons learned from these materials are also gathered and provided as points for consideration in this document.
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This quick sheet lists strategies for overcoming challenges faced by rural areas specific to COVID-19. The challenges are grouped into two main categories: those specific to healthcare facilities, and those related to at-risk populations who reside in rural areas.
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The use of telehealth has increased exponentially in response to COVID-19. Many hospitals have scrambled to add tablets to their inventory, facilitating patient communication with both loved ones and healthcare providers. Dr. Paul Biddinger, Medical Director for Emergency Preparedness at Mass General Brigham and Director of the Center for Disaster Medicine (Massachusetts General Hospital), Juan Estrada, Senior Director for Telehealth Consults at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Lee Schwamm, Vice President of Virtual Care at Mass General Brigham shared how staff have adjusted to this new method of healthcare delivery and how lessons learned are being incorporated in near real time.
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This ASPR TRACIE TA response includes resources specific to telehealth, particularly how it can be used by healthcare professionals to support the management of infectious disease patients while helping other patients avoid exposure.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated community mitigation efforts enacted have altered the delivery of and access to healthcare across the U.S. Healthcare providers are looking for new and innovative ways to deliver patient care to accommodate social distancing and community mitigation measures. The use of telemedicine has grown significantly in recent months. In addition to being used by outpatient providers, telemedicine plays an integral role in Alternate Care Sites (ACS). ACS are one of many alternate care strategies intended to provide additional hospital surge capacity and capability. HHS ASPR and ASPR TRACIE hosted this webinar where speakers discussed operations, management, and lessons learned from using telemedicine in these settings.
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This ASPR TRACIE technical assistance response includes sample questions provided by an ASPR TRACIE subject matter expert that can be tailored for a MOCC survey to pose to healthcare entities, along with resources that can be used to form example questions. It also includes general considerations related to assessing resources for a MOCC, and materials that provide data on hospitals collected at state and federal levels which may be useful for a MOCC (e.g., supply levels, bed capacity, medical facilities within a region).
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This toolkit offers flexible and modifiable guidance, developed by the U.S. government, aimed to assist regional, state, local, tribal and territorial governments to ensure load-balancing across healthcare facilities and systems so that the highest possible level of care can be provided to each patient during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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This document highlights how some states have utilized assistive technology to increase access to care for persons with disabilities.
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This webpage provides an overview of health equity, causes of health disparities, and mitigation strategies during the COID-19 pandemic.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication.
This resource emphasizes the importance of addressing all people inclusively and respectfully in order to achieve health equity.
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2021). New C2C Telehealth Resources Available.
This webpage provides resources for providers and health systems on "coverage to care" telehealth implementation strategies
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Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2021). Rural Crosswalk: CMS Flexibilities to Fight COVID-19.
This document highlights COVID-19 related provisions that CMS has issued and/or carried out during the Public Health Emergency (PHE) that impact Rural Health Clinics (RHCs), Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), Rural Acute Care Prospective Payment System (PPS) Hospitals, and/or Medicare-certified Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs).
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Surges of COVID-19 cases have overwhelmed hospitals in many areas of the United States. Often, severe patient loads are concentrated on a few facilities in a region. This document describes load-balancing and the Medical Operations Coordination Cell as options for managing patient surge.
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COVID-19 Healthcare Resilience Working Group. (2020). Critical Care Load-Balancing Operational Template.
This template provides a framework for indicators and triggers that may assist states that are implementing Medical Operations Coordination Cells (MOCC) to address patient surge related to COVID-19.
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This document provides general guidance regarding Indian Health Service COVID-19 funding distributions to tribes and tribal organizations.
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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2021). Civil Rights and COVID-19.
This webpage outlines guidance and legal responsibilities of providers and health systems to provide and/or maintain established crisis standards of care to ensure equitable access to care.
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