Critical issues in preparing for a mass casualty event: highlights from a new community planning guide.

To assist community planners in allocating scarce resources in a mass casualty event, the Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response collaborated with leading experts on a series of issue papers on preparedness and response. These papers were presented at an expert meeting in Washington, DC, in June 2006. The papers, revised based on meeting discussions, have been published by AHRQ as Mass Medical Care with Scarce Resources: A Community Planning Guide.