Hospital Surge Capacity A Web-Based Simulation Tool for Emergency Planners

The authors describe their experience with using the publicly available simulation tool called ‘Surge’ (accessible at http://www.pacerapps.org) to investigate various response strategies to increase surge capacity during an acute mass casualty incident for large urban, midsize community, and small rural hospitals. They found that combining all response strategies simulated surge capacity between 30% and 40% of staffed beds, with the greatest impact of response strategies seen in the large urban hospital simulation.