Situated along Grand Rapids “Medical Mile,” Grand Valley State University’s Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences is an alternative care site as designated by the regional emergency preparedness plan allowing for an additional 250 hospital beds.
“As we’ve learned through the course of the pandemic, that alternative care sites like you saw in New York with the Javits Center and in Detroit, you saw many places that came up, a lot of infrastructure was built and not used very readily or very well.”
Dr. Darryl Elmouchi is President of Spectrum Health West Michigan. He tells us alternative care sites are best used for an acute, sudden, time-limited, mass casualty event. While Spectrum’s Intensive Care Units are currently at 140% of pre-COVID capacity, expanding within the hospital’s walls makes more sense.
“We’ve done that already. We have areas that traditionally aren’t patient care areas and now are patient care areas. We would much rather be there, not only for a staffing standpoint, but if you think of all the ancillary support that needs to be at a hospital; pharmacy, lab, even information technology recourses, that all exists within all of our hospitals. I’d much rather have a patient somewhere close to all that and have to export that and then double the infrastructure and double the staffing.”
Matt Biersack is Mercy Health Saint Mary’s President. He says its 32 bed I.C.U. is at capacity.
“We’re looking at how we can potentially double-up patients within I.C.U. rooms. We’re looking at areas where normally we don’t take care of critically ill patients and being able to provide I.C.U. care in those areas.”
For now, area hospitals are adapting to the pandemic and patient needs.
