California’s Crisis Care Guidelines
Click here for the California Crisis Care Guidelines for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.
This document is a framework designed to help health care facilities plan
for the COVID-19 pandemic, which may cause overwhelming medical surge.
This guidance assumes incident management and incident command practices
are implemented and key personnel are familiar with healthcare emergency
management planning and processes that underlie scarce resource decision-making.
During a catastrophic public health event that results in medical surge,
each health care facility or health care system should use this guidance
as a framework to determine the most appropriate steps and actions for
their entity based on their environment, hazards, and resources. Since
pre-planned actions are always preferred to impromptu decisions, pre-event
emergency management planning and training is recommended. This document
addresses common categories of health care delivery, triage, staff and
space that could arise when available resources are limited or insufficient
to meet the medical needs of patients. In California, local or regional
HCCs, hospitals and health care systems may determine additional issues
and strategies in addition to those outlined in this document.
This document provides an overview of surge capacity and crisis care operational
considerations for health care facilities with an emphasis on hospitals
for the State of California. In addition to this framework, hospitals
and health care systems are encouraged to review federal guidance which
can be found on the National Academies of Science webpage.
This document is meant to provide information to support regional or county
health entities, including health departments as well as individual health
care facility operations, as they develop and implement their operational
plans. It is the responsibility of the regional entity or the facility
to work with their management team and medical staff to ensure operational
plans are in place. This document does not replace the judgment of the
regional health care facilities’ operational management, medical
directors, their legal advisors or clinical staff and consideration of
other relevant variables and options during an event. States and national
medical organizations have shared best practices and incorporated relevant
medical literature in developing Crisis Care guidelines. California is
using this collaborative work as a cornerstone for these guidelines.
California is committed to achieving and sustaining a California for All
and to its nation-leading laws and policies, including prohibiting discrimination
on such protected bases as, age, disability, race, sex, gender identity
and sexual orientation and immigration status.