Here's what it will take for medical facilities across the nation to handle the coming surge of COVID-19 patients.
On a recent visit the staff had already marked out the parking lot — painting green rectangles to mark the places where tents are starting to be set up to screen arriving patients for COVID-19.opens the door to a room crammed with supplies. It's called the"ready room" he explains. It's where they keep equipment to handle all kinds of crises — from Ebola to a HAZMAT incident to a mass casualty situation.
"Instead of everybody going into the emergency department, we would try and siphon off some of those patients," DeAtley says.Washington Hospital center's efforts highlight the question medical facilities across the U.S. now confront: Are they ready for what's coming? Craig DeAtley directs Emergency Management at MedStar. One goal in creating more room to handle an expected surge of COVID-19 patients, he says, is to move the assessment of some walk-in ER patients to stations in this room — as well as to stations in large tents being set up in parking lot.Other places in the world — where the coronavirus spread seems to be just ahead of the U.S. — like Italy — have seenAnd even in the U.S.
Toner estimates that if the U.S. sees the same rate of spread, every hospital in the nation would have to take drastic steps to meet the need."No hospital will be able to function as normal," says Toner."It's a question of whether they can adequately adjust the way they do things in order to handle the tsunami of patients that are coming their way."
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