The Surge Capacity Management Program, is part of the ministry's $90 Million investment into critical care services that began in 2006. The program is a principled approach to managing critical care surge within hospitals without compromising patient safety, emergency department wait times or surgical wait times. In collaboration with LHINs, the hospitals are developing action plans that will:

• Improve patient access to safe and timely critical care services
• Enable them to use alternate human resource strategies, equipment and technology to cover minor surges in capacity
• Enable LHINs hospitals to assist others experiencing larger surges in capacity.

Beginning in March 2009, the program will roll-out to 124 hospitals across all 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), with full implementation across the province by March 2010. When fully implemented, the Surge Capacity Management Program will strengthen capacity within hospitals across the LHIN’s and throughout the province.

The ministry has developed a Surge Capacity Management Toolkit to assist hospitals in the development of effective surge capacity management plans.