NCJ Number
226297
Journal
Homeland Defense Journal Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2009 Pages: 12,14,15
Date Published
January 2009
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article assesses the capacity of current United States medical resources (people, equipment, and accessibility) to cope with regional or national medical emergencies caused by large-scale natural disasters, terrorist acts, and pandemic diseases.
Abstract
Local, municipal, and State healthcare professionals and infrastructures, which constitute the first-line of emergency medical response, currently operate at full capacity in meeting existing medical needs of the populations they serve. Without immediate action to build a national emergency medical surge, the next pandemic, disaster, or attack could result in catastrophic loss of life. National emergency medical surge, which includes prestaged and mobile medical response equipment, would be more efficient than maintaining surge capacity for every locality. Distributing responders and equipment throughout the United States would solve the problem of local medical failure, and modular systems would provide mobility across degraded or unusable transportation infrastructure. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates the optimum medical surge capacity is 250 healthcare professionals per million people. Teams of 2,500 healthcare professionals in the 10 largest U.S. metropolitan areas results in a surge requirement of 25,000 healthcare professionals. The surge requirement for a national pandemic that affects 300 million people is 75,000 healthcare professionals. This article proposes a plan to balance the risks of a major disaster or attack against the high cost of developing a nationwide surge capacity. First, the expansion of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps should be continued. Second, a National Medical Guard should be established or the Army National Guard Medical Units should be expanded. Third, national emergency medical equipment should be modularized and prepositioned across the Nation for use by active and reserve healthcare professionals. Fourth, interstate medical licensure to facilitate the use of out-of-State healthcare professionals should be established.