Home Health Patient Assessment Tools Preparing for Emergency Triage

The purpose of this study was to develop a patient risk assessment tool that would allow home care agencies, hospitals, and emergency planners to anticipate the needs of all home care patients in a community, should a mass casualty incident (MCI) occur. It focuses on those whose needs are most complex—those patients who could not be safely evacuated to a public shelter or even a special needs shelter during a MCI. It includes a Community-Living Patient Assessment Tool for Disaster Planning, which is a screening tool that creates a record for identifying patient needs and plans for meeting those needs.