MCI guides

Patient tracking at a mass casualty incident

After an incident the questions always come: how many patients, where did each one go, and when. Families phone. Hospitals phone. If tracking was done on paper, the answers take days.

This guide is general information for trained responders. Follow your own service's protocols and local rules, which may differ.

What to track for each patient

• Tag number
• Triage category, and every change to it
• Name, age and sex, if known
• Vehicle, service and destination hospital
• Times: triaged, left scene, arrived, handed over

Why it fails

• Paper tags get wet, torn or lost.
• Two crews give the same tag number to different patients.
• Records stay on one person's clipboard and never reach command.
• Patients leave with other services and the trail stops.

What helps

• One tag number per patient, never reused. Incident Commander gives each patient a running number with your organisation's letters, so two crews can never clash, even without signal.
• A shared record that every phone on scene sees and updates.
• A simple handover link for other services. See handing patients to other services.
• A family desk that can answer "was my relative there?" without sharing everything.