COVID hospital set up within Hawke’s Bay Hospital

16 Apr 2020, 13:21

Hawke’s Bay Hospital has been completely reconfigured to house a ‘COVID-19 hospital’ within the hospital as part of its emergency response planning to stop infection spread and further protect patients, staff and the wider community.

Acting Chief Medical and Dental Officer Dr John Gommans said today the reconfiguration was all about added safety measures and timely patient care.

 “Within the space of three weeks we have quite literally turned the hospital upside down in order to put measures in place that will further protect others, whilst having robust care and capacity plans in place for future COVID-19 patients,” he said.

Dr Gommans said the reconfiguration was a huge team effort across clinical, logistics, digital enablement and procurement teams.

“We know these are evolving and challenging times and believe these well thought out changes will help to further reduce the risk of any infection spread to staff, patients or members of our community.  

“Whilst some changes have been fairly straight forward, others have involved a complete reconfiguration of equipment and technology.  

The reconfiguration included:

• A separate clinical screening and triage area (prefab building) for potential COVID-19 patients presenting to ED outside ED’s main entrance, which will be closed to all other use to enable appropriate initial assessment and initial management of patients.
• A second intensive care ward set up in the new gastroenterology building for COVID-19 patients requiring high dependency or intensive care.
• Changing the use of the Paediatric Ward to an adult inpatient Respiratory Assessment Unit for those with acute respiratory illnesses that may be due to COVID-19. This ward has been chosen because it has the most single rooms to allow minimisation of cross-infection.
• Moving the Paediatric Ward to the AT&R Rehabilitation Unit
• Moving the AT&R Unit to Ward B3.
• Ward B3 (orthopaedic) patients moved into A3

Dr Gommans said emergency planners were finalising the staffing plan required to resource the COVID hospital. An active Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) training programme was already in place.