Many health care institutions have invested considerable time rethinking the use of clinical space to increase capacity for COVID-19 patients. Could this experience be leveraged and scaled to meet a future surge — driven by a pandemic or other extreme emergency events — if considered proactively and at a larger, district scale?
The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the concern that we will see more emergency events in the coming years. Future incidents may include epidemics, pandemics, natural disasters and large-scale terrorist attacks. One opportunity to develop greater resiliency to these events may be a reconsideration of the inter-institutional planning at the medical district level.