Assessment of Hospital Emergency Department Response to Potentially Infectious Diseases Using Unannounced Mystery Patient Drills - New York City, 2016

What is already known about this topic? Recent infectious disease epidemics highlight the importance of rapid recognition and isolation of patients with severe infectious diseases. Unannounced mystery patient drills have been used in the health care setting to evaluate protocols and staff members’ ability to identify and manage potentially infectious patients. What is added by this report? Ninety-five mystery patient drills were conducted in 49 New York City hospital emergency departments to assess responsiveness to patients with potentially severe infections. The times required to perform patient masking and isolation were evaluated; overall, patients were masked and isolated in 78% of drills. Masking and isolation occurred significantly more frequently when travel history was obtained (88%) than when it was not (21%). Overall, the median time from patient entry to masking was 1.5 minutes (range = 0-47 minutes) and from entry to isolation was 8.5 minutes (range = 1-57). What are the implications for public health practice? A toolkit was developed to support health care facilities and health departments conduct similar drills to identify areas for improvement and enhance readiness at a critical point of entry into the health care system. This toolkit could be useful for other jurisdictions. © 2017, Department of Health and Human Services. All rights reserved.