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Models for Assessing Strategies for Improving Hospital Capacity for Handling Patients during a Pandemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2022

Bahar Shahverdi ,
Elise Miller-Hooks ,
Mersedeh Tariverdi ,
Hadi Ghayoomi ,
David Prentiss  and
Thomas D. Kirsch
Bahar Shahverdi
Affiliation:
Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Elise Miller-Hooks*
Affiliation:
Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Mersedeh Tariverdi
Affiliation:
The World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
Hadi Ghayoomi
Affiliation:
Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
David Prentiss
Affiliation:
Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
Thomas D. Kirsch
Affiliation:
National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA
*
Corresponding author: Elise Miller-Hooks, Email: miller@gmu.edu.
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Abstract

Objective:

The aim of this study was to investigate the performance of key hospital units associated with emergency care of both routine emergency and pandemic (COVID-19) patients under capacity enhancing strategies.

Methods:

This investigation was conducted using whole-hospital, resource-constrained, patient-based, stochastic, discrete-event, simulation models of a generic 200-bed urban U.S. tertiary hospital serving routine emergency and COVID-19 patients. Systematically designed numerical experiments were conducted to provide generalizable insights into how hospital functionality may be affected by the care of COVID-19 pandemic patients along specially designated care paths, under changing pandemic situations, from getting ready to turning all of its resources to pandemic care.

Results:

Several insights are presented. For example, each day of reduction in average ICU length of stay increases intensive care unit patient throughput by up to 24% for high COVID-19 daily patient arrival levels. The potential of 5 specific interventions and 2 critical shifts in care strategies to significantly increase hospital capacity is also described.

Conclusions:

These estimates enable hospitals to repurpose space, modify operations, implement crisis standards of care, collaborate with other health care facilities, or request external support, thereby increasing the likelihood that arriving patients will find an open staffed bed when 1 is needed.

Keywords

COVID-19SARS-CoV-2hospital capacity managementintensive careinfectious patient care
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 17 , 2023 , e110
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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