TY - JOUR
T1 - Managing Surges in Demand
T2 - A Grounded Conceptual Framework of Surge Management Capability
AU - Larson, Jeffrey D.
AU - Lai, Alden Yuanhong
AU - DePuccio, Matthew J.
AU - Hilligoss, Brian
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/6
Y1 - 2024/6
N2 - Surge management is important to hospital operations, yet surge literature has mostly focused on the addition of resources (e.g., 25% more beds) during events like pandemics. Such views are limiting, as meeting surge demands requires hospitals to engage in practices tailored to a surge’s unique contingencies. We argue that a dynamic view of surge management should include surge management capability, which refers to how resources are deployed to respond to surge contingencies. To understand this capability, we qualitatively studied five hospital systems experiencing multiple surges due to COVID-19 between April 2020 and March 2022. We develop a framework showing that managing surges involves preserving capacity, expanding capacity, smoothing capacity demand, and enabling surge management. We contribute to surge literature by identifying practices hospitals can adopt to address surges and offering a better understanding of surge conditions (e.g., degree of novelty) that make some surge management practices more appropriate than others.
AB - Surge management is important to hospital operations, yet surge literature has mostly focused on the addition of resources (e.g., 25% more beds) during events like pandemics. Such views are limiting, as meeting surge demands requires hospitals to engage in practices tailored to a surge’s unique contingencies. We argue that a dynamic view of surge management should include surge management capability, which refers to how resources are deployed to respond to surge contingencies. To understand this capability, we qualitatively studied five hospital systems experiencing multiple surges due to COVID-19 between April 2020 and March 2022. We develop a framework showing that managing surges involves preserving capacity, expanding capacity, smoothing capacity demand, and enabling surge management. We contribute to surge literature by identifying practices hospitals can adopt to address surges and offering a better understanding of surge conditions (e.g., degree of novelty) that make some surge management practices more appropriate than others.
KW - COVID-19
KW - capabilities
KW - disaster preparedness
KW - hospitals
KW - qualitative
KW - surge capacity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183650830&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85183650830&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/10775587241226485
DO - 10.1177/10775587241226485
M3 - Article
C2 - 38270374
AN - SCOPUS:85183650830
SN - 1077-5587
VL - 81
SP - 245
EP - 258
JO - Medical Care Research and Review
JF - Medical Care Research and Review
IS - 3
ER -