In response to hospital concerns regarding sustained medical surge, NCTTRAC hosted a final Regional Medical Surge Conference Call with regional hospital and public health partners on 1/9/2020 to discuss potential causes and mitigation strategies and to review action items from the Regional Medical Surge Conference Call held in December.  Multiple hospitals reported that medical surge is overall decreasing, but when they are experiencing medical surge it is occurring with greater severity – in other words, the previous trend of consistent unrelenting medical surge appears to have been replaced by an overall decrease in surge with occasional spikes.  The remaining medical surge appears to be less related to pediatric patients and more evenly spread across all patient groups with a heavier emphasis on behavioral health patients.  NEDOCS trends for Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant counties from 12/26/19 – 1/8/20 support that there is an overall decrease in emergency department surge, and on average there is a 3.54% decrease in NEDOCS scores compared to the same time period last year.  Multiple facilities reported that they were refining internal processes regarding telemetry patients (e.g. “how to safely decrease monitoring”) with some success.  EMS agencies should anticipate wall times for non-critical patients to see an overall decrease compared to the last few months, but should continue monitoring EMResource for occasional severe spikes.  Hospitals and other healthcare provider types should anticipate an overall decrease in interfacility transfer times compared to the last few months, but similarly should continue monitoring EMResource for occasional severe spikes. A full summary of the conference call as well as other supporting documents can be found in the “Private Notes” section at the bottom of this page (please note that you must be logged in to the NCTTRAC website to see the “Private Notes” section).

There will be no further Regional Medical Surge Conference calls.  Additional or ongoing issues will be referred to the appropriate NCTTRAC committee.

Please direct any questions to Jacob Seil at jseil@ncttrac.org or 817-607-7010.  If your facility is experiencing an emergency or disaster, please contact the 24/7 NCTTRAC Duty Phone at 817-607-7020.