gms | German Medical Science

Background/Research question/Problem: Ensuring hospitals’ surge capacity for the management of substantial numbers of COVID-19 patients is a central goal during the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In Bavaria, Germany, decentralized localized structures based on integrated command centers (ILS) as well as more centralized structures on a state/district level were implemented during the pandemics’ first wave in the spring of 2020. The goal of the state-level coordination centre was the assessment and prediction of the pandemic’s course. To help optimize patient flow, a continuous data-based COVID-19 reporting was established and distributed among stakeholders within crisis management structures. The reporting implementation and its methodological approach present several methodological challenges.

Solution and suggestion: The reporting is based on selected indicators related to the development of both cases and patients requiring a hospital stay and provides continuous risk assessments and recommendations for local decision-making. Daily-based information on the development of normal care beds, IMC (intermediate care) beds and ICU (intensive care unit) beds as well as information on officially reported SARS-CoV-2 cases from public health authorities were used. In addition, we continuously described relevant state-level measures targeted to contain the pandemics’ spread. The indicators presented the risk assessment at a given time point (e.g. (age-specific) 7-day-incidence, ratio of available and occupied beds) as well as the trend in regard to the previous week (e.g. moving averages of incidence and bed occupation). The aggregation of the indicators resulted in a “traffic-light” risk assessment on the ILS-level, which was employed intensively for local decision-making processes. We describe the development of the indicators used and discuss their further development.

Conclusion/Discussion/Lessons learned: Our experiences during the course of the pandemic show that an early implementation of a data-based COVID-19 reporting provides helpful support for the capacity management within local crisis structures. This contributed to the fact that, despite high patient numbers, governmental regulation of hospital capacities was not needed during the second wave in the winter of 2020/21 in order to ensure appropriate care. We discuss possibilities for the further development of COVID-19 reportings.