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.