The GAO’s latest release, “State Efforts to Plan for Medical Surge Could Benefit from Shared Guidance for Allocating Scarce Medical Resources (20-page PDF),” is the result of an evaluation of the nation’s medical capacity to deal with “mass casualty events,” a response they refer to as a “medical surge.” Read the one-page summary here. The release is a summary of a similarly titled 2008 report, but it has gained extra relevance in the light of the U.S. response to the similar circumstances of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The report found that states were making good progress in developing bed reporting systems and coordinating with military and veterans hospitals, as well as in selecting alternate care sites and registering medical volunteers. It also noticed that they were lagging when it came to planning for altered standards of care.
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