Topic Collection: Patient Movement and Tracking

In the event of a mass casualty incident, local emergency responders will be faced with the challenge of identifying, categorizing, triaging, and tracking large numbers of patients. As the scale of the event increases, so does the need for expanded assistance—from the local, state,  regional, and federal levels, including health care coalitions and other health systems. Organizing appropriate transport and matching appropriate patients to the transportation can be challenging. Patient tracking takes a coordinated effort with all involved to identify a system that works in specific jurisdictions. This Topic Collection includes resources on patient movement from area healthcare facilities and tracking that can help emergency planners and responders learn more about various levels of assistance available, how to request it, how it is activated, and lessons learned from recent events.

This topic collection does not include resources specific to pre-hospital transport to the initial hospital; those can be found in the ASPR TRACIE Pre-Hospital Topic Collection. Pre-hospital triage methods can also be important when not enough transportation resources are available from the scene; access the Trauma Care and Triage Topic Collection (forthcoming) for more information. Patient movement is also distinct from hospital evacuation, but important overlapping concerns and issues exist. The Healthcare Facility Evacuation Topic Collection may be a valuable complementary resource.

Each resource in this Topic Collection is placed into one or more of the following categories (click on the category name to be taken directly to that set of resources). Resources marked with an asterisk (*) appear in more than one category.