Mass Medical Care with Scarce Resources

About This Guide

Purpose of the Guide

The purpose of this guide is to provide community planners—as well as planners at the facility/community, State, and Federal levels—with valuable information and insights that will help them in their efforts to plan for and respond to a mass casualty event (MCE). This guide provides information on:

• The circumstances that communities likely would face as a result of an MCE.
• Key constructs, principles, and structures to be incorporated into the planning for an MCE.
• Approaches and strategies that could be used to provide the most appropriate standards of care possible under the circumstances.
• Examples of tools and resources available to help States and communities in their planning process.
• Illustrative examples of how certain health systems, communities, or States have approached certain issues as part of their MCE-related planning efforts.

This information will be useful in helping planners address the issues associated with preparing for and responding to an MCE in the context of broader emergency planning processes, such as those laid out in Standing Together: An Emergency Planning Guide for America's Communities, published by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, 2005.

This document is intended not to reflect Department of Health and Human Services policy but to provide State and local planners with options to consider when planning their response to an MCE.

Development of the Guide

This guide builds and expands on an earlier document published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) that explored the issues and outlined the principles associated with the provision of medical care in the face of overwhelming numbers of casualties. It is the product of collaboration between the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (formerly the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness) and AHRQ, who coedited the guide.

Leading experts were identified and a series of papers was commissioned to address issues pertaining to six critical fields related to mass casualty care. Working individually or as parts of writing teams, the experts prepared drafts of their papers, which were presented for discussion among a broader group of experts at a meeting held in Washington, DC, on June 1-2, 2006. The writers incorporated much of the discussion and input from that meeting into their respective chapters.