Altered Standards of Care in Mass Casualty Events

From the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), excerpted below. The webpage has a link to the reoprt and recommendations.

Mong the recommendations:
-Develop general and event-specific guidelines for allocating scarce health and medical resources
-Implement a process to address nonmedical (i.e., finance, communication) issues related to the delivery of health and medical care
-Develop a comprehensive strategy for risk communication with the public
-Develop practical tools such as searchable databases for verifying credentials of medical personnel on-site during a mass casualty event
-Develop a "Community-Based Planning Guide for Mass Casualty Care" to assist preparedness planners

The excerpt:

A mass casualty event could compromise the ability of health systems to deliver services meeting established standards of care. It is critical to plan for adjusting current heath and medical care standards to ensure that the care provided in a mass casualty event result in saving as many lives as possible.

To address the issue, an expert panel was convened by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).