The Arizona Department of Health Services has a new phone service to help hospitals manage COVID-19 cases.

When a hospital needs to transfer a patient to another facility, usually they’d need to call around to find out which sites have beds or doctors available.

The new Surge Line, which launched this week, allows hospitals to call one, centralized number to find out which hospitals in the state are ready to take COVID-19 patients.

“That way we can share that in a round-robin fashion so no one system gets a lot of transfers at once and gets overwhelmed,” said Dr. Keith Frey, chief medical officer for Dignity Health Arizona, who helped create the collaborative system. “Ultimately, this is the best for the patient and the consumer because we can shorten the time that they can get to the very best care that’s needed to save their life.”

The Department of Health Services is managing the Surge Line. Hospitals are updating the department with near real-time bed and ventilator availability.

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