Countering Covid-19 -- Field hospitals are increasing being used. Here's a look inside a Rhode Island one

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Sun, 2020-12-27 17:17 — mike kraft

Inside a Rhode Island field hospital, preparing for the worst of the pandemic States turn to battlefield medical facilities as the coronavirus’s uncontrolled spread continues. Lenny Bernstein Washington Post

... With tens of thousands of covid-19 patients hospitalized during the year-end explosion of the coronavirus, health authorities are again turning to field hospitals such as this one in spots across the United States. In California, they are in huge tents. In Wisconsin, one stands at the state fairgrounds. Some cities have converted convention centers, as New York did when the first surge hit in April. Here, the facility occupies a vast two-story building that once housed a call center and the headquarters of a bank.

More commonly associated with war zones than one of the world’s most sophisticated medical systems, field hospitals are a sad symbol of how poorly the United States has handled the pandemic.

But they are also a glimpse of the future. Alternatives such as this have accelerated medicine’s understanding of how much care can be delivered at home and in other locations outside hospitals and doctor’s offices. No one expects health care to return to its pre-pandemic normal.

“We’re looking for ways to innovate quickly,” said Paari Gopalakrishnan, chief medical officer of the field hospital.

On Dec. 14, the day The Washington Post visited the Cranston facility, Rhode Island’s rate of positive coronavirus tests was an alarming 8.1 percent, and its 111.3 new cases for every 100,000 residents was among the highest in the country. Not surprisingly, 509 people were hospitalized with covid-19, nearly the largest number the tiny state has seen in a single day since the pandemic began. About 100 were in Kent Hospital.

The field hospital was built, in part, as a safety valve for times like this. The first patient arrived Nov. 30, moving into one of the beds in Pod 1 of Ward C, even as Gopalakrishnan and his staff of nearly 300 continued to outfit the 94,000-square-foot clinical area. Row after row of beds, 331 in all, are lined up in three separate wards, the “rooms” separated only by curtains. ...

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