RAPID: Documenting Hospital Surge Operations in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused many hospitals to dramatically shift their normal operations, including delaying elective and non-emergency surgeries, to accommodate a surge in critically ill infectious disease patients while still admitting and treating other severe injuries and illnesses not related to COVID-19. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant will support the collection of time-sensitive data from two major hospital systems, Samaritan Health Services in Oregon and MedStar Health System in Washington DC/Maryland, to document changes in admissions patterns due to COVID-19, operational changes in practices to manage the surge, and patient outcomes during the pandemic. The project has the potential to provide important decision support to hospitals as they respond to future pandemics and other mass casualty events and should lead to better understanding of how hospital systems can mount an effective response to these major disturbances.

The PIs will collect qualitative and quantitative data to document hospital operations as well as assess patient characteristics and outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection will be sourced from medical records characterizing the patient population treated, health outcomes, including diagnoses, length of stay, treatment, as well as pre-pandemic planning guidelines, real-time operational changes in ICU and hospital bed capacity allocation and staffing, equipment availability, including personal protective equipment and testing equipment, and other hospital, state, and federal interventions. Once collected, analysis of these data is expected to lead to knowledge, through better models and simulation, that can improve response to future pandemics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.