A public health emergency can strain the capacity of hospitals and other traditional venues for medical services. In such emergencies, it may be necessary to select alternate facilities for providing medical care. Two new interactive computer tools, Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection Tool and an ancillary tool, Alternate Care Facility Patient Selection Tool, will help institutions and communities select alternate care facilities and determine which patients to send to them.
Select to Download Information.
The Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection Tool helps the user compare the features of actual sites with the features that are necessary for a given emergency. An ancillary tool, the Alternate Care Facility Patient Selection Tool, helps the user determine whether the health status of a given patient allows for transfer to an alternate site.
The Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection tool helps institutions and communities select a temporary alternate care facility or facilities during a public health emergency over a small geographic area. The user rates the necessity of various features for a given facility in a give incident type and then enters the actual features for each facility under consideration. The tool automatically produces a comparison of the suitability of different potential facilities for a specific incident type. Up to six facilities can be compared.
The tools were developed under contract with the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and funded by HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration.
Download Information
Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection Tool
Alternate Care Facility Patient Selection Tool
The Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection Tool and Alternate Care Facility Patient Selection Tool will be available in both Web and Excel® versions. You may download the Excel version of the tool from this page by using the link below. Right click on the link and then select "Save Target As" (Internet Explorer) or "Save Link As" (Firefox® or Netscape®).
Assistance
Persons using assistive technology may not be able to fully access information
in this file. For assistance, contact Margi Grady at margi.grady@ahrq.hhs.gov.
The accessible version of the tools will be available by December 14, 2009.
Persons experiencing technical problems with this report should contact Derek Goldstein at Derek.Goldstein@ahrq.hhs.gov.
Tool Set Requirements
For these Excel worksheets to properly function, you must "Enable Macros" upon opening each file. The macro security level setting for Excel should be set no higher than "Medium," and you should use virus protection software. If you were not given a window allowing you to select "Enable Macros" upon opening this file, you may notice that many of the calculations will not work. With the file open in Excel, go to the "Tools" menu, select "Macro," select "Security," and then choose "Medium" from the "Security Level" tab. Contact your internal computer support department for help if needed.
More Information
If you have any questions about the content of these tools, contact:
Sally Phillips at
(E-mail) Sally.Phillips@ahrq.hhs.gov
Current as of September 2009
Internet Citation:
Disaster Alternate Care Facility Selection Tool. September 2009. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/acfselection/
540 Gaither Road Rockville, MD 20850