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California hospital shows how patient surge protocols work

Hospital Safety Insider, January 7, 2016

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You hear it all the time: Practice now for the situations that require your staff to deal with an unprecedented surge in patient visits.

Hospitals in Sacramento, California are getting high praise for their response January 6 to an unusually high surge in the number of patients in hospital emergency rooms that evening. The state has been dealing with heavy rainfall that has caused a high number of accidents and other situations that resulted in higher patient volume.

With all hospital ERs on diversion, UC Davis Medical Center had to close its doors to all non-critical patients for the first time in five years, according to a report in the Sacramento Bee.

A control center was activated at the hospital, and all incoming ambulances were required to check in to determine which hospital could take a new patient to help evenly distribute the demand. Elective surgeries were also canceled to help deal with the surge, which lasted for about four hours.

Read more here.

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