BOSTON — Massachusetts medical professionals have been anticipating the need to reestablish field hospitals as the second surge of coronavirus loomed. And now that surge is here.
“That time is upon us. if it was open today we’d be using it,” said Dr. Eric Dickson, President and CEO of UMASS Memorial Health Care in Worcester. “The medical center in Worcester is full.”
Dickson told Boston 25 News anchor and investigative reporter, Kerry Kavanaugh that right now there are 100 COVID patients hospitalized across his central Massachusetts system.
That’s about a third of what central mass saw during peak of spring surge in first week of May. At that point, the state scrambled to increase hospital beds and within eight days converted the DCU Center in Worcester into a field hospital.
Now, with COVID cases surging rapidly, the state is taking action by bringing that field hospital back.
“So, we are going to need more beds than we have today over the next three to four weeks and we are probably have to significantly curtail elective surgeries; things that would free beds up like we did in the spring time,” Dickson said.
The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency says starting right now four tractor trailers of beds and medical supplies will head back into the arena.
By December it will be staffed.
A big concern this fall is to maintain routine and preventative care while combatting COVID.
"One of the challenges we’ll have this time is; a lot of people who were doing the clinic visits the preventive care previously staff the field hospital and the units that we have opening in the hospital. So we’ve go to balance the need for staffing in these surge areas with the ability to continue to do those studies. "
25 Investigates analyzed how the five field hospitals were used in the spring.
According to data provided by the state, at its' peak, only 100 of the 500 beds for hospital patients at Boston Hope were used.
About 30 of the 250 beds in Worcester were in use at once during peak.
The field hospitals in Lowell, Dartmouth and the one in Bourne never saw a single patient.
“Were they underutilized? Is this money not being well spent? How do you justify all the money staffing when the patients were not there,” Kavanaugh asked.
“The reality is we didn’t know what the peak of the surge was going to look like,” Dickson said. “We built enough capacity to manage the worst case scenario and we ended up in the middle case scenario where we just needed only a small amount of those extra beds.”
The Worcester field hospital should be up and running by the first week in December.
Depending on how this second surge plays out ...the field hospital could once again be transformed. this time into a vaccination center.
MEMA says they are evaluating other locations should additional field hospitals become necessary.
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