As part of its commitment to public health, Vizient, Inc. and its subsidiary company Sg2 today announced their Surge Demand Calculator for COVID-19-related demand planning is immediately available to all hospitals throughout the United States at no cost. The calculator is a data-driven scenario planning tool for non-ICU bed, ICU bed and ventilator demand. It enables users to model COVID-19 patient surge impact across local populations and to apply capacity considerations for regional market, health system and individual hospital planning. The calculator incorporates infectious disease modeling specific to COVID-19 and has been vetted by hospital systems, biostatisticians, and epidemiologic and pandemic experts.

“We are excited to be able to make this tool available to everyone. Health systems across the U.S. have used it and report that they have been able to better project potential ICU and ventilator shortages and the timing of these shortages based on their local market infection rates and social distancing measures,” said Madeleine McDowell, MD, FAAP, principal and medical director for Sg2. “The projections have been validated in a broad range of markets and align very closely to actual hospital and ICU volumes reported. As capacity is added, such as through the opening of cohorted ICU units and the postponement of elective cases, users can update their data so that results reflect those metrics.”

More specifically, the Surge Demand Calculator will enable users to:

• Identify where the market is on the timeline of the COVID-19 infection outbreak based on first known community-acquired COVID-19 hospitalization date. In addition, trends and patterns of increase can be used to validate or adjust timing on the surge curve.
• Understand the impact of varying rates of disease spread, including scenarios that consider various social distancing efforts.
• Localize impact to reflect service area demographics via age-adjusted COVID-19 infected population based on hospitalization rates.
• Calculate and evaluate projected COVID-19 surge bed, ICU and ventilator shortage or surplus at the regional market, health system or organizational level.
• Track shortage or surplus projections over time as disease transmission and market response progress.

“Data based scenario planning is critical for hospitals to look into the future and appropriately plan for the demand that will be needed to care for infected patients in a community,” said Bharat Sundaram, president and chief operating officer for Vizient. “That’s why we’re offering this tool to all health organizations on the public Vizient website. The more informed health care organizations can be, the better their planning can be and the better they can take care of their patients and their clinicians.”

About Vizient, Inc.

Vizient, Inc. provides solutions and services that improve the delivery of high-value care by aligning cost, quality and market performance for more than 50% of the nation’s acute care providers, which includes 95% of the nation’s academic medical centers, and more than 20% of ambulatory providers. Vizient provides expertise, analytics and advisory services, as well as a contract portfolio that represents more than $100 billion in annual purchasing volume, to improve patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient has earned a World’s Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute every year since its inception. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Vizient has offices throughout the United States. Learn more at www.vizientinc.com.

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