Communities with low vaccination rates, waning immunity, and indoor gatherings pose the potential for additional surges of patients with COVID-19 who need hospital care. As hospitals and health systems continue to care for patients during this pandemic, CHA has updated its FAQs and links to help inform the surge response to challenges such as staffing and space.
In particular, the document includes a reminder that hospitals that cannot obtain sufficient nurses or other personnel through their contracted staffing agencies can submit a resource request for staff to their medical health operational area coordinator.
The state continues to contract directly with staffing agencies and may be able to provide your hospital with staff. These would be provided through a Memorandum of Understanding under which the state provides the staff, and the hospital reimburses the state for the cost of the staff.
Please see the FAQs for additional resources.