Patient Evacuation Resource Classification System (PERCS) for Residential Healthcare Facilities: Patient Classification System Translatable to Healthcare Evacuation Protocols, System Modeling, and Transportation Resources

An examination of the emergency evacuation of hospitals and residential healthcare facilities revealed the limited ability to identify the required resources to safely transfer a patient to a new facility. Transfer complications include matching the patient's medical needs with the available transport and destination resources. This research investigated current classification approaches used in determining surge bed capacities at potential destination facilities and those applied through healthcare evacuation modeling and simulations. The research purpose was to examine these approaches, identify their shortfalls, and develop a system that could promote rapid, accurate determination of transportation and destination facility requirements for each medically fragile patient. This effort produced a Patient Evacuation Classification System (PERCS) comprised of new classification terms and a series of sub models that identify the most appropriate transportation and destination resources the patient requires for a safe evacuation while minimizing the expenditure of excess resource capabilities applied to each patient movement. The research introduces an efficiency concept and matching protocols with supporting algorithms that enables the system to expedite the identification of a transportation resource’s specific capabilities and of the continued care capacities of predetermined destination facilities. The system also provides methodology to determine if a specific patient should be accompanied by staff or special equipment/medicines that supplement existing destination and transportation options to achieve a patient safe evacuation. PERCS is designed as a decision support tool providing visibility on multiple resource choices, displaying their capacity to safely meet the patient’s resource needs plus an efficiency score for each to suggest the best match. The system also provides visibility on the patient cohort evacuation process allowing decision-makers to determine how best to use the limited availability of high value resources with robust capabilities such as a scarce Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or a Pediatric Critical Care Truck. This research employed systems engineering methodology to develop the PERCS model and assessed the model through expert elicitation using Convergence Interviewing. A prototype of the PERCS model was created and conducted through a proof of concept simulation based on a Solomon Four-Group Design. The research gained the input from expert professionals within the distinct disciplines involved in a healthcare facility evacuation. The proof of concept panel included physicians, nurses, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and emergency managers/ transportation dispatchers with a range of experience in an actual facility evacuation.

Author

• Ventura, Gustavo Manuel

Language

• en

Keyword

• Evacuation Model
• Special Needs Evacuation
• Hospital Evacuation
• Evacuation Simultion
• Evacuation Staffing
• Patient Evacuation

Date created

• 2017

Type of Work

• Dissertation

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Engineering Management

Degree

• Ph.D.

Advisor

• Shaw, Gregory
• Barbera, Joseph A

Committee Member(s)

• Gralla, Erica L
• Shaw, Gregory
• Mazzuchi, Thomas A
• Macintyre, Anthony G
• van Dorp, Johan R
• Barbera, Joseph A

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/3n203z24h