14 April 2020

Critical Care Surge Response Strategies for the 2020 COVID-19 Outbreak in the United States

by Mahshid Abir
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This is a pre-publication version of the report. It has completed RAND's research quality assurance process but was not thoroughly copyedited or proofread in the interest of rapid dissemination. The final online version is forthcoming.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented stresses on hospital and health care systems. In this report, the authors present a list of strategies for creating critical care surge capacity and estimate the number of patients accommodated, given the number of available critical care doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists, ventilators, and hospital beds. They also document the development of a user-friendly, Microsoft Excel–based tool that allows decisionmakers at all levels — hospitals, health care systems, states, regions — to estimate current critical care capacity and rapidly explore strategies for increasing it.

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