Approved by the ACEP Board of Directors November 2004
The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) recommends close coordination between emergency physicians, health care facilities, and public health entities to educate the public regarding appropriate physician referrals and emergency department (ED) utilization for presumptive influenza.
To meet this goal, the following steps are recommended to minimize the impact of community wide influenza.
Ensure that emergency care and critical care providers [emergency medical services (EMS) personnel, nurses, physicians, and ancillary staff involved in direct patient care] are immunized against influenza.
Implement rapid screening, identification, and appropriate respiratory infection control interventions for all individuals arriving in the ED.
End the practice of boarding admitted patients in the ED when no inpatient beds are available. Hospitals operating at full capacity may be required to distribute boarded patients to inpatient hallways, solariums, admission units, and other spaces outside the ED, but this practice is preferable to packing seriously ill influenza patients together in the hallways of an ED.
Implement regional protocols to monitor hospital inpatient and ED capacity, as well as ambulance diversion status.
- Adopt regional protocols to govern when, how, why, and for how long crowded hospital EDs can divert inbound ambulances.
Require hospitals and communities that are severely affected by influenza to postpone elective admissions until the crisis abates.
Provide federal and state emergency funding to compensate hospitals and EDs for the unreimbursed costs of meeting this grave public health challenge
