Coordination unit of outgoing flow from intensive care unit during COVID-19 crisis

Langlois, M.; Borel, M.; Clovet, O.; Justice, V.; Spuccia, C.; Raux, M.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put the hospital infrastructure into the difficulty of a long time public health crisis. The health care system had to accept the concept of destructuring crisis and ultimately piloting with uncertainty. The key factor during the crisis was to avoid the saturation of the care system especially for the intensive care unit. Upon the hospital medical crisis unit request, the DYNAMO team was accountable to propose solutions for “outflow”. Under the crisis medical director's green light, the DYNAMO unit has opened flow between the hospital intensive care unit and step down units created de novo (public and private). DYNAMO is the outcome of the collaboration and joint preparation between the university medical department DREAM and RAID Tactical medical unit allowing the use of technical tools and adding the tactical spirit into the hospital frame. This collaboration has supported the transfer in secure conditions of about 100 patients across the intensive care units with a consistent distribution of patients in order to maintain the most efficient intensive care units impacted by the crisis able to accept an influx of new patients. To achieve this, the DYNAMO team defined medical criteria to determine a patient's eligibility to be transferred under the team transfer supervision. The methodology is formed by 4 independent loops: the requester service, the transfer team, the medium for transfer and the receiver service. This model appeared to be simple, agile and autonomous. We are delighted to share our lessons learned on the methodology and human organization with the emergency care community.