Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response

The Pan Flu Scramble Exercise

What is the Pan Flu Scramble Exercise?

The “Pan Flu Scramble Exercise” or the “Scramble” is a discussion-based, tabletop exercise designed for communities and their healthcare stakeholders to test their patient surge plans. This exercise has been used at several CDC-HPRT sponsored community workshops focused on medical surge.

Exercise players will be asked to coordinate their response to an influenza pandemic scenario; where the number of patients seeking care exceeds the limits of their community’s ability to provide adequate and timely medical evaluation and care.

What will communities gain from this exercise?

The Scramble can help communities address the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) and Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) preparedness and response capabilities. The addressed capabilities include

Figure%26#37;26#37;26#37;202: Sample Scramble Component — Sample Scramble Component

HPP

Capability 1: Healthcare System Preparedness
Capability 6: Information Sharing
Capability 10: Medical Surge

PHEP

Capability 1: Community Preparedness
Capability 6: Information Sharing
Capability 10: Medical Surge

The Scramble allows a community the opportunity to analyze their medical surge capacity and provides a forum to identify potential gaps in the community’s model of healthcare delivery in a no-fault environment. The Scramble follows Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) guidelines for a discussion-based, tabletop exercise. It also includes information and tools that will help communities conduct an HSEEP-compliant exercise.

Get started!

The Scramble PDF (link below) contains multiple files, all of which can be customized to plan for and run the Scramble. When the PDF is opened, you will see multiple icons representing folders. Please locate the “Exercise Guide” folder and open the “Activity Guide” which will give you an overview of what files are included in the PDF and what files you may wish to use.

Each file may be opened then downloaded by clicking on the icons.

You may also wish to download The Pan Flu Scramble Exercise Video. This video sets the scenario for the beginning of the exercise.

Download the Pan Flu Scramble Exercise PDF