Central Brooklyn Center for Bioterrorism and Preparedness Planning: An Integrated Plan to Augment Surge Capacity

A concept of operations describes an integrated approach to developing surge capacity plans between multiple hospitals. Four hospitals in Brooklyn, New York, developed a collaborative plan by conducting inventories of various hospital assets and identifying surge capacity resources at each facility. Although surge planning should be a standard practice for all hospitals, this concept is noteworthy in that it used an integrated approach between several hospitals in a well-defined geographic area. This practice may be applicable to the assets and needs of local health departments and networked private sector health services, particularly if it were linked to the region's incident command system.