A 12 months in the past, some 10,000 group members toured the grounds of the newly-constructed Stanford Hospital, admiring the gleaming seven-story constructing’s hovering atrium, lush gardens and personal rooms with beautiful views.
However in a matter of months, the group and the nation confronted the rising menace of the advancing novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19.
The hospital’s added house, new expertise and different improvements grew to become essential to managing the disaster.
“This state-of-the-art constructing was designed to allow our distinctive workers to do their highest below worst-case eventualities: mass casualty, pure catastrophe or perhaps a international pandemic,” Stanford Health Care President and CEO David Entwistle informed me for my latest Stanford Medicine news article concerning the 12 months for the reason that hospital welcomed its first sufferers. “We did not count on to be challenged so quickly, however … the pandemic has given us an unwelcome however highly effective alternative to show what we’re able to.”
On opening day a 12 months in the past, Entwistle shared this message with the Stanford Well being Care group:
The brand new facility has, certainly, proved to be an adaptable and efficient facility for dealing with the pandemic and, Entwistle stated, an indication of precisely what the brand new constructing was meant to deal with.
As architect George Tingwald, MD, AIA, director of medical planning at Stanford Well being Care informed me:
Lots of people requested us how we knew to arrange. Out of the blue a pandemic got here, and we had been prepared for it … I needed to remind those who this was the results of 15 years of planning. We hoped it would not occur but it surely did. And we had been very lucky to have a brand new facility.
The 368-bed hospital constructing contains many design options which have helped defend sufferers and workers in the course of the pandemic.
Early on, hospital planners determined to construct solely personal rooms to reduce an infection danger.
The plans additionally included a classy new air flow system, so rooms may very well be shifted to destructive air stress, which prevents infectious brokers from leaving an area.
Moreover, the hospital’s ample capability meant it might convert a complete intensive care unit to COVID-19 care whereas making use of the present hospital at 300 Pasteur Drive to individually home basic ICU sufferers.
“As we put collectively protocols, the house actually enabled us to create a really efficient setting that was secure for our workers and our college,” Helen Wilmot, vp of services companies and planning at Stanford Well being Care, informed me. “It will have been super-challenging to try this within the current house.”
The hospital’s long-range plans additionally envisioned the opportunity of changing the parking zone subsequent to the Marc and Laura Andreessen Adult Emergency Department as an overflow remedy space within the occasion of main disaster.
Within the spring, division workers members shortly turned the storage right into a drive-up system for COVID-19 testing and screening.
Individuals had their vitals checked by means of their automobile home windows by nurses carrying protecting gear, and so they had been ready to make use of their cell gadgets for a video convention analysis by an emergency doctor.
“A number of departments within the hospital got here collectively in a single day” to get the system up and operating, Patrice Callagy, RN, government director of emergency companies at Stanford Well being Care, stated within the article. “Everybody got here collectively for this disaster.”
For sufferers, together with Dylan Thomas, 23, the brand new hospital constructing was a godsend. Thomas, who’s immunocompromised due to a number of medical circumstances, stated he was grateful to have a personal room when he was admitted to the hospital.
“In all my stays, I’ve by no means needed to fear I might get COVID due to the personal rooms,” stated Thomas, who has regularly required inpatient care. “I’ve all the time felt as secure as I may very well be.”
Photographs by Steve Fisch Photography
