The High Cost of Fragmentation: Why We Must Collaborate on Health Care Capacity Resources

When disaster strikes—whether it’s a pandemic, wildfire, hurricane, or mass casualty event—our nation’s ability to respond effectively depends on one critical factor: knowing where care is available. Yet, despite advances in health IT, we continue to operate with fragmented, state-by-state approaches to health care capacity reporting. The result? Delayed responses, wasted resources, overwhelmed hospitals, and patients left without timely care.

The Risks of Going It Alone

Without regional or national collaboration, health systems and emergency managers are left in silos. States collect data differently, hospitals use various platforms that rarely communicate, and federal agencies often receive incomplete or outdated information. This creates:

• Inefficient Resource Allocation: Beds, staff, ventilators, and supplies cannot be shifted quickly to where they’re most needed.

• Poor Patient Outcomes: Delays in transferring patients to available care can mean the difference between life and death.

• Inconsistent Emergency Response: One state may be overwhelmed while a neighboring state has unused capacity simply because systems don’t “talk” to each other.

• Higher Costs: Lack of coordination leads to duplication of effort, manual data entry, and unnecessary spending on temporary fixes instead of scalable solutions.
  

Barriers Created by Segmented Policies

State-specific policies on data sharing, privacy rules, and reporting requirements introduce friction into emergency preparedness efforts. During COVID-19, we saw:

• States requiring hospitals to report to different dashboards with varying definitions of capacity.

• Limited ability for federal agencies to have a unified, real-time picture of national hospital strain.

• Challenges in coordinating patient transfers across state lines due to misaligned protocols.
  

This patchwork approach weakens our national resilience and leaves providers and patients vulnerable during crises.

The Path Forward: Public-Private Partnership

To overcome these barriers, we need a national, standardized, real-time health care capacity utility—built through a public-private partnership that:

• Aligns Expectations: Creates common definitions and reporting standards across states and systems.

• Streamlines Information: Leverages data already collected by hospitals and health IT vendors, reducing reporting burdens.

• Coordinates Response: Provides a shared, always-on dashboard that empowers hospitals, emergency managers, and federal agencies to make timely, informed decisions.

• Improves Patient Experience: Enables rapid transfers, shorter wait times, and equitable access to care, especially during surges.

• Reduces Costs and Increases Efficiency: Eliminates duplicative state efforts, simplifies technology infrastructure, and unlocks federal funding for preparedness.
  

This is not just a technology solution—it’s a governance and collaboration model that treats hospital capacity as a national critical resource.

We have an opportunity to build this now, not during the next crisis. By connecting hospitals, health systems, states, and federal agencies through a unified, public-private initiative, we can save lives, improve patient experiences, and make our health system more resilient for whatever comes next.

It’s time to stop working in silos and start working as one. Lets discuss the path forward.