COLUMBUS, Ohio – Public health and private hospital officials in Columbus believe that, when it comes to an infectious disease like Ebola, an ounce of preparation may prove to be worth a pound of cure.
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They unveiled a plan Wednesday calls for the four major hospital systems to designate “cohort” facilities to take patients as they are diagnosed, if any cases of Ebola do turn up in central Ohio.
The OSU Wexner Medical Center, OhioHealth and Mt. Carmel Health have designated hospitals that will be prepared to take patients in groups of five.
“They can do it for one patient, for two patients and they believe up to five and then, at that point, it would shift to another of our flagship institutions,” Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Teresa Long said.
OSU would be the first to respond, treating the first five adults diagnosed with the deadly virus. OhioHealth, which operates Grant Medical Center and Riverside Methodist Hospital, would take the sixth patient through the tenth and Mt. Carmel Health would treat patients 11-15. If there are more than 15 people diagnosed with the virus at the same time, the rotation repeats, Jeff Klingler, president of the Central Ohio Hospital Council said.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital would take pediatric patients until it reached its capacity. Then it would either ask for help from other children’s hospitals in Ohio or send adolescent patients to adult hospitals, said Dr. Bruce Cunningham, clinical researcher and member of the infectious diseases team at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Representatives from the Columbus and Franklin County public health agencies as well as all four hospitals described the plan Wednesday afternoon, but also stressed that there had still been no cases of Ebola in Ohio, though more than 160 people were still being monitored, including one from Columbus, because they had contact with a nurse who was diagnosed with the disease after visiting northeast Ohio.
The preparations for something that has not happened — an Ebola outbreak – will be useful, the officials say, in planning for something that might.
“This preparation we’re doing for Ebola is the kind of preparation that we can extend to any number of infectious diseases that may impact our community in the future,” said Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, OhioHealth’s chief medical officer.
Knowing it would be the first to receive a patient, OSU has set aside two beds and additional space for patients and the staff that would treat them, chief medical officer Dr. Andrew Thomas said.
The designation of the Ohio Department of Health laboratory as a bio-safety level 3 lab, meaning it can test a suspected case and return results in four to six hours instead of the days it takes if the blood sample is shipped off to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Thomas said.
All of the officials said they were confident they had sufficient supplies of the protective gear needed for their staff if they are called on to treat a patient with Ebola and Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman says the Division of Fire has more than 1,500 protective suits, including 50 of the Haz-mat “moon suits” often worn by medical personnel. Every responding medical unit in the division has some protective gear on board, he said.