An Excel-Based Model for Helping Hospitals Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing extraordinary strains on the U.S. medical system, most especially hospitals. Hospitals are searching for ways to ramp up their surge capacity to provide critical care for the sickest COVID-19 patients. A team of RAND researchers undertook a quick-turn study to examine a range of strategies for creating critical care surge capacity in the nation’s hospitals. As a part of the project, they developed this 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.

Access the critical care surge response tool here

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