Emergency response strategies for organizations are defined at conventional, contingent, and crisis levels. Using reported information to help facilities determine which level they should be operating is critical. However, this requires information to be reported in a standardized fashion. For example, a facility with plenty of PPE inventory may decide to institute a crisis conservation strategy (i.e.: decontamination) as a cost-savings measure, while another facility, with very little PPE inventory, may be using crisis strategies because they have no ability to obtain more supplies. Automated electronic reporting of PPE, bed availability, etc.. provides a level of standardization to help categorize facilities into conventional, contingent, and crisis categories without facilities trying to determine this themselves. Refer to Optimizing PPE Supply webpage: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/general-optimization-strategies.html

Existing Wording:

Availability measures can also report whether conservation measures have been implemented (e.g., N95 mask reuse after sterilization)

Proposed Wording:

Automatically reported PPE inventory information at the manufacturer and model number level can be used to determine if a facility should be instituting conventional, contingent, or crisis optimization strategies.