Who
- Senior leaders from four Sacramento health systems
- Sacramento County Public Health
What
At the request of Sacramento County Public Health, Hospital Council convened a meeting with hospital executives and emergency planners to identify if any hospital could serve as an Ebola assessment facility, and if not, what would the California Department of Public Health have to do to make that happen.
The hospital leaders who attended the meeting or submitted feedback in writing expressed they had no interest in serving as an Ebola assessment facility. Physical space constraints and a tight supply of workforce are the primary impediments. With the termination of California’s state of emergency set for the end of February 2023, hospitals will lose workforce flexibility and space waivers that allow them to create temporary additional bed capacity. This conversation revealed that hospitals are not well prepared to respond to new and different public health threats in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. State and county health leaders should be aware of this in order to improve the circumstances that would enable hospitals to meet the needs of such new threats.