The Department of Health and Human Services has issued Providing Mass Medical Care with Scarce Resources: A Community Planning Guide in an effort to provide community planners, as well as planners at the institutional, state and federal levels, with information on planning for and responding to a mass-casualty event.

The product of a collaboration between the HHS Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the guide is written by leading experts in six areas related to mass-casualty care: prehospital care, hospital and acute care, alternative-care sites, palliative care, ethical issues, and legal considerations.

The report provides information on:

• The circumstances that communities are likely to face in a mass-casualty event.
• Key constructs, principles, and structures to be incorporated into the planning for a mass-casualty event.
• Approaches and strategies that could be used to provide the most appropriate standards of care possible under the circumstances.
• Examples of tools and resources to help states and communities in their planning process.
• Illustrative examples of how specific health systems, communities or states have approached various issues in their mass-casualty event planning efforts.

The guide can be downloaded in PDF format from the AHRQ Web site.