Why Is Burn Disaster Planning Important?
A national byproduct of improved economic efficiency across all disciplines of medicine, is the lack of sufficient additional "soft space" or a surplus of onsite medical supplies. The "just in time" approach and the real-time staffing ratio approach has left little room for the surge of patients that are produced by a sudden disaster type event. Disasters that produce burn and blast injuries will quickly overwhelm the existing healthcare system and particularly the designated burn centers across the nation.
Presently, there are no Burn Centers in South Carolina, two in Tennessee, two in Georgia, three in Virginia and two in North Carolina. Of those burn centers, only the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Hospitals and the Burn Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston Salem are verified burn centers.
Burn Center Verification was originally developed by the American College of Surgeons and modeled using the ACS Trauma Center Verification standards and today is administered by the American Burn Association. Today, verified burn centers will see approximately 2/3rds of all burn patients seen in a burn center. (For more information on the ABA verification process, please refer to this Link.)
Designated burn beds are limited everywhere and North Carolina is no different. With 9 at Wake Forest Baptist and 21 at UNC, the limitations are clearly here as faced by other states. While these centers do a great job of triage and moving patients to meet the needs on a regular basis, a surge of patients will quickly overwhelm this system. During a burn or blast disaster event, the two burn centers in North Carolina will coordinate to assure maximum utilization is available to the patients needing critical burn care. One component of this program is to work with the Trauma Centers in the state to absorb a portion of the patients whose needs can be met there without further inundating the limited burn resources.
Another component of this program is to provide education to the local EMS programs, regional and community hospitals to assure appropriate triage and treatment is provided using decision aids that are developed by the burn and trauma programs across the state. Patients that can be managed locally, should be managed locally and those with greater severity of injury, will be triaged appropriately to either the Trauma Centers or Burn Centers.