Surge Planning
Convention centers and arenas in the area were converted to field hospitals to handle the predicted patient surge. The US Naval Ship Mercy, a Navy hospital ship with patient capacity of 1,000 beds was dispatched to the Port of Los Angeles where it remained for seven week before returning to its homeport in San Diego. The ship treated 77 patients with non-COVID medical complaints during the deployment. California Health Corps, a state-wide volunteer program was initiated which yielded substantial interest, 82,000 volunteers signed up in the first week.
Surge planning was initiated with emergency triage drills, development of labor pools, immediate cessation of scheduling elective cases, and daily policy updates were provided via email communications across the healthcare system. In preparation for numerous patients coming to the emergency department, designation of zones within departments for persons with suspected COVID, confirmed COVID, and those who were being treated for non-related medical conditions. Online dashboards were created for reporting daily hospital capacities throughout the county for up-to-date status monitoring.
Emergency medical services developed interventions to minimize unnecessary patient volume in emergency departments by aggressive field triage measures including postponing transport of cardiac arrest patients for at least five minutes after revival on scene and establishing a videoconferencing platform for emergency department physicians to provide telemedicine services to patients at home and managing non-urgent issues remotely.