Pandemic Models Help Predict Case Numbers, Needed Capacity

The American Hospital Association has compiled a guide to various modeling tools health systems can use to forecast the spread of COVID-19 and its impact in their regions. Although forecasting is always imperfect, these models represent the best effort of researchers to assist health care organizations as they plan for a surge of COVID-19 patients. In addition to the two most publicized models—the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasting tool and Penn Medicine’s COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics—the guide includes planning tools built on those models to help users project the daily number of personnel, intensive care beds and ventilators a hospital will need to meet demand. Other tools are designed to identify and track at-risk populations or to assist decision makers by mapping the pandemic’s epidemiology.