The COVID-19 Staffing Projections tool is intended to provide staffing projections based on forecasted patient demand. To generate these forecasts, we recommend the CHIME tool, which provides the opportunity to input over a dozen parameters to help provide an estimate of patient demand for your hospital.
Step 1. Input values into CHIME
CHIME documentation.
Step 2. Download projected census file
After inputting your values, download the available projected census file (e.g., 2020-04-02_projected_census.csv).
If you have your own projections that you would like combined with staffing ratios that you have compiled, you can upload a file that has the following the column headings: date, hospitalized, and icu. Make sure that the date column includes the day, month, and year as a value (e.g., 4/2/2020 or 2020-04-02).
Step 3. Fill out staffing ratios table
If you haven’t already, visit the COVID-19 Staffing Needs Calculator to generate your ideal staffing ratios and identify plausible values based on a point-in-time census. You can then download a staffing table Excel file from the tool from the Patient-to-Staff Ratios tab.
In staff_table.xlsx, please do not modify the column headings: team_type, role, n_bed_per_person, n_bed_per_person_crisis. The columns n_bed_per_person and n_bed_per_person_crisis are for capturing the number of patients that a given role can oversee in normal and crisis modes, respectively.
Step 4. Generate visuals
After generating patient census forecasts and the staffing table, you can upload these two files into the COVID-19 Staffing Projections tool to generate your staffing projections. First, upload the file you downloaded from CHIME, i.e., 2020-04-02_projected_census.csv, and second, upload your modified staff_table.xlsx. Generate your plot and begin exploring the different staffing demands by hovering over the plot and selecting difference tools at the top-righthand corner of the plot. Lastly, if you wish to further examine the file that created the plot (i.e., combines forecast and staffing ratios), you can Download Combined File.
