Coronavirus Is Bringing a National Catastrophe to U.S. Hospitals. Here's What We Can Do to Prepare

I have bad news for health care shareholders invested in making people healthy. The market is in the worst downturn since 1987. I have worse news for humans invested in being healthy. The coronavirus (COVID-19) is about to turn health care upside down.

Remember Hurricane Katrina in 2005? Of course you do. Localities across the Gulf Coast could not handle the patient load. This time, we’re not talking about weather, and COVID-19 is global, not local. But we are about to have similar issues as our hospitals will be overrun with patients.

Fifteen years is an eternity in politics. However, as an emergency-medicine provider, the medical mass casualty incident that happened after Hurricane Katrina is still top of mind. The Gulf Coast watched as nursing homes without power stacked bodies and were left without means to treat the infirm.

I realize most people have no idea of what Mass Casualty Incident Management (MCIM) is. It’s about to impact your life. MCIM is a series of tools to handle large patient numbers. I’ve lectured on MCIM across the country. I’ve written on the topic for fire and EMS magazines and the textbooks they learn from too. I’ve spoken from New York to the West Coast and lots of places in-between. I’ve lectured on surge capacity as a secondary issue for these events, and this is the definition. The system is designed to respond to single events. We have tools for larger single events with many patients, but not on an extended basis.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/coronavirus-is-bringing-a-national-catastrophe-to-u-s-hospitals-heres-what-we-can-do-to-prepare-967623/