Hospital preparedness for COVID-19 pandemic: experience from department of medicine at Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System

ABSTRACT

The 2019–2020 pandemic Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has inundated hospital systems globally, as they prepare to accommodate surge of patients requiring advanced levels of care. Pandemic preparedness has not been this urgently and widely needed in the last several decades. According to epidemiologic predictions, the peak of this pandemic has still not been reached, and hospitals everywhere need to ensure readiness to care for more patients than they usually do, and safety for healthcare workers who strive to save lives. We share our hospital-wide rapid preparedness and response to COVID-19 to help provide information to other healthcare systems globally.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• SARS-CoV2
• hospital preparedness
• response
• clinical features
• how to prepare
• pandemic

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr Richard Sutton (Infectious Diseases) who helped create the clinical algorithm, Christine Bihday (EAP) who provided the employee mental health support resources, and all the key members of ICC at their hospital who brought about this hospital-wide response to COVID-19, including: Al Montoya (Director), John Callahan (Associate Director), Dr. Michael J. Kozal (Chief of Staff), Suzanne Hook, Steve Robidoux and Annamarie Noyes (Nursing), Dr. Asim Tarabar (ED Director), Bryan Owens (Safety), Dr. Brian Linde (Employee Health), Dr. Louise Dembry, Dr. Ann Fisher and Anthony Pellegrino (HEIP), Dr. Christopher Ruser (Primary Care), Dr. Gary Stack (Laboratory Medicine), Rebeka Seaberg (Hospital Education), Dave Salthouse (VA Police), Lydia Borysiuk (Pharmacy), Gary Boucher and Mark Schraer (Logistics), Dr. Ronnie Rosenthal (Surgery), and Michael Pinneau (Quality Management).

Declaration of interest

The authors have no conflicts to disclose. This work was not supported by any grant/funding.

The contents of the paper and the opinions expressed within are those of the authors, and it was the decision of the authors to submit the manuscript for publication.

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.