Hospitals’ Challenge: Money, Staff, Training for Next Crisis

When two bombs detonated at the Boston Marathon in 2013, Massachusetts General Hospital had nine minutes to get ready. Nursing supervisors cleared lower-priority patients from the emergency room. Environmental Services staff brought stretchers to await the surge. Doctors scrubbed up.

Staff members had trained for such emergencies so there was no guessing when the first of nearly 40 victims was wheeled through the door—even though the hospital already had almost twice as many patients as available beds.

“Everybody was able to do that without directly being told to do so because we practiced it,” said Paul Biddinger, chief of the ...