The COVID-19 pandemic is creating unprecedented stresses on hospital and health care systems. In this report, the authors present a list of strategies for creating critical care surge capacity and estimate the number of patients accommodated, given the number of available critical care doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists, ventilators, and hospital beds. They also document the development of a user-friendly, Microsoft Excel–based tool that allows decisionmakers at all levels — hospitals, health care systems, states, regions — to estimate current critical care capacity and rapidly explore strategies for increasing it.

Read the full research report at RAND

Author(s): Mahshid Abir, Christopher Nelson, Edward W. Chan, Hamad Al-Ibrahim, Christina Cutter, Karishma Patel, Andy Bogart