Regional COVID-19 Hospital Clustering

The aim is to combine capacities to avoid triage situations when single hospitals reach their capacity limit. The hospital critical levels were defined and the development was closely monitored. The overview was developed to inform the clusters about the current status of the capacities. This is updated three times a day. Within these three clusters, a governance structure was set up to allow an optimal flow of information and decisionmaking, especially when capacity limits are reached and reallocations become necessary. Meetings of these decision-making bodies occur usually daily, sometimes more than once a day. When a cluster reaches its capacity, the three hospital control centers must coordinate with each other. Then the patients are transferred to hospitals in another cluster. Within the cluster Dresden , the crisis unit consisted of the Central Hospital Dispatch Center, the Hospital Operations Center, and the Corona Medical Board. The Central Hospital Dispatch Center was established in March 2020 and operated 24/7. It is responsible for centralized management of bed capacity within the cluster. Furthermore, the control center coordinates the distribution of COVID-19 patients according to medical urgency and admission capacity. In addition, it distributes centrally procured supplies and is available for medical consultation. During the peak of the pandemic, the Central Hospital Dispatch Center received an average of 120 calls per day, for a total of 34,239 calls.