How this Kansas City hospital prepared for the World Cup

Kansas City is certainly not new to football—American football that is. But fútbol (you might know it as soccer) is a different story.

The Missouri city hosted multiple countries for the World Cup this year, including Argentina and England, two favorites in the tournament. And while most people are focused on what’s happening on the field, hospitals have another point of view: disaster preparedness.

Children’s Mercy, a 408-bed pediatric hospital in KC, started preparing back in 2022 when the city was first picked to host games, Jennifer Watts, VP and associate chief medical officer of acute care and inpatient services, told us.

“With large volumes of people, always comes some risk,” she said.

Game prep. The World Cup brings more international travelers, which raises challenges around communicable diseases, misunderstanding of the US healthcare system, not knowing the area and increased traffic, Watts said.

Kansas City planned for 650,000 visitors in June and July, according to KCUR.

Increasing supplies, a natural response to expecting more patients, was a big part of the hospital’s World Cup prep. FIFA provided the hospital with data that showed they should prepare for a 3-5% increase in volume.

“We prepare as hospitals for supplies around things that we would commonly see,” Watts said. “Typical injuries: bumps, bruises, breaks, traumas, things that we see with an increased number of people.”

Children’s Mercy also partnered with the state disaster medical assistance team to have providers treating 100–150 people on site at World Cup events. This has helped avoid overcrowding in the emergency department, Watts said.

She said that so far, the preparation has helped keep things smooth, with only a few transportation challenges making travel times to the hospital a bit longer at the beginning of the tournament.

Tapping into tech. Argentina and Switzerland are playing in the quarterfinal on July 11, and this preparation, along with technology provided by GE Healthcare, will continue to be an asset for Children’s Mercy.

The hospital started working with GE Healthcare in 20232 to implement the Children’s Mercy Patient Progression Hub, a command center that allows hospital staff to see patient flow and adjust operations in real-time. For example, staff can see where there are free beds and move a patient in as needed. They can also see what supplies are needed or need to be cleaned.

“That allows us to see every patient where they are, what do they need, what are they waiting on, where do they need to be,” Bree Bush, general manager of command center and CareIntellect at GE HealthCare, told us.

Outside of the hospital, this predictive and patient flow management technology is also being used across other hospitals in the community. For the World Cup, seven regional hospitals created a Pediatric Medical Operating Coordination Center (PMOCC), which is providing them visibility into bed capacity.

That means if one hospital is full, they can check and see if another provider has a bed, though patient data is anonymized. This helps them manage things better as individual providers.

“With such constrained resources, it’s a team sport out there,” Bush said.