AONL, AHA Join NAM Effort to Improve CSC Implementation

AONL and the American Hospital Association (AHA) last week joined with the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) and other health care organizations in calling for systemwide actions to share clinical and operational lessons learned in the pandemic to better implement crisis standards of care (CSC). This effort will help prepare health care systems and communities for potential patient surges. The group offered recommendations for operations going forward. These include ensuring that health care facilities in a given area have common indicators and agreed-on thresholds for what is considered a “crisis” situation, and creating messages for health care providers and the public to communicate what to expect from the health care system when crisis thresholds are reached. The document also recommends developing facility/system policies to support resource allocation decisions, and emphasizing that staff should not be taking it upon themselves to make such decisions. Further recommendations are available in the NAM announcement. (NAM news release, 5/13/21)