In this Friday, Nov. 14, 2014, photo, a nurse walks down a hallway alongside a patient care room in a new custom-built bio-containment unit for potential Ebola cases at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York.NEW YORK – What does it take to Ebola-proof a hospital?
Over the past few months, U.S. medical centers have spent millions of dollars putting together a plan to treat patients with the scary, but extremely rare disease.
To a large extent, it has been an exercise in improvisation.
In Newark, New Jersey, a hospital dealing with a space-crunch and staff anxiety moved its Ebola operation out of its main building and into a mobile medical shelter ordinarily used during natural disasters. In Dallas, Texas, three hospital systems pooled resources to create a treatment center in a defunct intensive care unit sitting empty since the spring. In Kansas, a hospital hastily built walls and hung plastic sheeting to create an isolation suite. A New York City hospital put together one unit, decided it wasn’t optimal, and is finishing work on a replacement.
Federal officials have said they’re trying to identify up to 20 hospitals around the country as Ebola referral centers. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inspection teams have visited nearly 30 hospitals to offer advice and see if they have the right safeguards in place to treat patients with Ebola.