Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States

An increasing number of U.S. hospitals are now equipped to treat patients with Ebola, giving nationwide health system Ebola readiness efforts a boost.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), state health officials have identified and designated 35 hospitals with Ebola treatment centers, with more expected in the coming weeks.

Hospitals with Ebola treatment centers have been designated by state health officials to serve as treatment facilities for Ebola patients based on a collaborative decision with local health authorities and the hospital administration.

Ebola treatment centers are staffed, equipped and have been assessed to have current capabilities, training and resources to provide the complex treatment necessary to care for a person with Ebola while minimizing risk to healthcare workers.

“We continue our efforts to strengthen domestic preparedness and hospital readiness. I am pleased to announce that 35 hospitals have been designated by state health officials as Ebola treatment centers that are prepared, trained, and ready to provide care for a patient with Ebola,” says Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.

More than 80 percent of returning travelers from Ebola-stricken countries live within 200 miles of an Ebola treatment center. During their active monitoring, state or local public health authorities communicate every day with potentially exposed individuals to check for symptoms and fever for the 21 day incubation period of the Ebola virus.

“As long as Ebola is spreading in West Africa, we must prepare for the possibility of additional cases in the United States,” says CDC director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. “We are implementing and constantly strengthening multiple levels of protection, including increasing the number of hospitals that have the training and capabilities to manage the complex care of an Ebola patient. These hospitals have worked hard to rigorously assess their capabilities and train their staff.”

The additional facilities supplement the three national bio containment facilities at Emory University Hospital, Nebraska Medical Center, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will continue to play a major role in our overall national treatment strategy, particularly for patients who are medically evacuated from overseas. Facilities will continue to be added in the next several weeks to further broaden geographic reach.

CDC also released guidance for states and hospitals to use as they identify and designate an Ebola treatment center. The guidance covers the range of capabilities hospitals need in order to provide comprehensive care for patients with Ebola. HHS, through the CDC and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR), also provided technical assistance to health departments and hospitals.

Each hospital with an Ebola treatment center has been assessed on-site by a CDC Rapid Ebola Preparedness (REP) team. The CDC REP team is staffed with experts in all aspects of caring for a patient with Ebola, including staff training, infection control, personal protective equipment (PPE) use, and details such as handling and management of the trash from the patient’s room.  As of Dec. 1, CDC has conducted REP team assessments in over 50 hospitals in 15 states and Washington, D.C.

Because of the active monitoring program of returning travelers from countries where Ebola is present, federal health officials have a clear sense of where travelers from affected countries in West Africa are going and where Ebola treatment centers are most likely to be needed. The priority areas are jurisdictions served by the five international airports screening returning travelers for Ebola, cities with high proportion of returning travelers from West Africa, and cities with large populations of individuals from West Africa.

The 35 hospitals with Ebola treatment centers to date are:

• Kaiser Oakland Medical Center; Oakland, California

• Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center; Sacramento, California

• University of California Davis Medical Center; Sacramento, California

• University of California San Francisco Medical Center; San Francisco, California

• Emory University Hospital; Atlanta, Georgia

• Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; Chicago, Illinois

• Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Chicago, Illinois

• Rush University Medical Center; Chicago, Illinois

• University of Chicago Medical Center; Chicago, Illinois

• Johns Hopkins Hospital; Baltimore, Maryland

• University of Maryland Medical Center; Baltimore, Maryland

• National Institutes of Health Clinical Center; Bethesda, Maryland

• Allina Health’s Unity Hospital; Fridley, Minnesota

• Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota; St. Paul, Minnesota

• Mayo Clinic Hospital; Minneapolis, Minnesota

• University of Minnesota Medical Center, West Bank Campus, Minneapolis;
Rochester, Minnesota

• Nebraska Medicine; Omaha, Nebraska

• North Shore System LIJ/Glen Cove Hospital; Glen Cove, New York

• Montefiore Health System; New York City, New York

• New York-Presbyterian/Allen Hospital; New York City, New York

• NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation/HHC Bellevue Hospital Center; New York City, New York

• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital; New Brunswick, New Jersey

• The Mount Sinai Hospital; New York City, New York

• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

• University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Galveston, Texas

• Methodist Hospital System in collaboration with Parkland Hospital System and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Richardson, Texas

• University of Virginia Medical Center; Charlottesville, Virginia

• Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center; Richmond, Virginia

• Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Milwaukee, Wisconsin

• Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin – Froedtert Hospital, Milwaukee; Milwaukee, Wisconsin

• UW Health – University of Wisconsin Hospital, Madison, and the American Family Children’s Hospital, Madison; Madison, Wisconsin

• MedStar Washington Hospital Center; Washington, DC

• Children’s National Medical Center; Washington DC

• George Washington University Hospital; Washington DC

The CDC has worked with state and local health officials to implement an active monitoring program for travelers returning from affected countries in West Africa.  Each traveler, on entry to the U.S., is provided with a CARE (Check and Report Ebola) kit including a thermometer, temperature log, contact information with the State health department, and wallet card with important information.  Since inception of the program, more than 3,000 travelers have been monitored more than 30,000 times by state or local health departments to check daily for fever or other symptoms.  In each case since implementation of the program, travelers who have experienced fever or other Ebola compatible symptoms have been connected with the health department through this process and safely transported to a facility that was ready to care for them using appropriate infection control.

In addition to designated hospitals to treat Ebola patients, CDC has been working with state and local public health officials to identify Ebola assessment hospitals. Assessment hospitals are hospitals identified by state health officials, in collaboration with local health authorities and the hospital administration, as the point of referral for those individuals being actively monitored and who develop symptoms compatible with Ebola such as fever.

These hospitals have the capability to: evaluate and care for someone who is having the first symptoms of Ebola for up to 96 hours; initiate and coordinate testing for Ebola and for other diseases alternative diagnoses; and either rule out Ebola or transfer the individual to an Ebola treatment center, as needed.

An assessment hospital would only care for a patient who might have Ebola during the time before a confirmed diagnosis is made until it then transfers the patient to an Ebola treatment center.

While no states had such plans in September, 15 states that have the majority of the travelers now have plans in place to evaluate persons under investigation and for providing care for up to 96 hours while testing can be arranged. CDC also released guidance for states and hospitals to use as they identify Ebola assessment hospitals.

The designated hospitals add to U.S. Ebola readiness efforts.  However, all healthcare workers at hospitals and other healthcare facilities should be trained and able to recognize symptoms, safely isolate a potential Ebola patient, and contact public health authorities for guidance on next steps for safely managing the patient. Since July, HHS, with leadership from CDC,  has conducted and continue to conduct extensive outreach to the health care community, including hospitals, clinicians, healthcare unions, and medical and nursing provider associations.

CDC has educated nearly 150,000 healthcare workers via webinars, and trained more than 525,000 via online clinical resources, to assure that healthcare workers are trained and able to recognize and safely isolate a potential Ebola patient in the unlikely event that such a patient presents unexpectedly.  CDC continues to conduct infection control training.

In addition, CDC Ebola Response Teams (CERT), made up of experts in epidemiology, infection control, laboratory, and communications stand ready to deploy to any hospital in the United States with probable Ebola cases.

CDC is now supporting 42 state and local laboratories throughout the county to perform rapid Ebola testing. Four months ago only CDC and the U.S. Armed Forces laboratory could test for Ebola. These additional laboratories capable of diagnosing Ebola cut the time needed to rule out a person for Ebola or confirm a case and speed the patient’s transport and treatment in a specialized Ebola treatment center.

Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS  — The CDC has named University of Minnesota Medical Center a regional Ebola treatment center, the state Department of Health announced June 12, 2015.

The Health Department received a five-year, $3.25 million federal grant to establish the Ebola treatment center. The grant will be used  to build  hospital containment units that can treat two Ebola patients at the same time and over time the hospital will be able to treat 4 Ebola patients at the same time making Minnesota a good place to treat Ebola patients that arrive from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and other countries infected with Ebola.

Minnesota high population of West Africans  Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia residents will be happy to know they can soon  get American healthcare for Ebola while staying in the United States and that their families that get Ebola after coming for a visit to Minnesota can also be treated for Ebola.

Minnesota Ebola hospitals that accept Ebola patients  will also accept Ebola infected people from other parts of the United States and Ebola patients from other countries outside of the United States.  Every state will continue to have local hospitals prepared to treat Ebola patients that continue to come in to the United States every day and that will be monitored for the deadly Ebola Virus.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn – .

Unity Hospital opened its new biocontainment unit to treat Ebola patients here.

It has spent about a million dollars in the process.

Unity Hospital President Helen Strike explained, “That million dollars that we spent, a lot of it went to staff training, which is good. We spent about 350 to 400-thousand on the unit itself and down in our emergency room, preparing a room for assessment.”

Intensive Care Unit Charge Nurse Darla Dooley said, “It’s exciting to take care of that type of patient and you feel like you can give the care they need.”

If Ebola goes away what happens to this investment?

All the money spent on training staff and creating Unity’s biocontainment unit will not go to waste. It is improving care for other patients.

Said Strike, “We’ve developed training systems and ways to care for patients, regardless of what they have, based on things we’ve learned from this experience.”

Dr. Jeffrey Dichter, medical director of the Unity Intensive Care Unit said, “We’re really prepared through this experience, especially to really care for whatever might walk on our doorstep or whatever the infection of concern a year from now might be.”

Unity is one of four Minnesota hospitals designated to treat Ebola patients. The others are the Mayo Clinic, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics and the University of Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota has also received federal funding to be the regional center to handle highly-infectious diseases.

Washington

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – Federal officials have announced that the state of Washington will receive a five-year grant to help prepare the Pacific Northwest’s regional Ebola treatment center.

State Department of Health officials say the grant will help the center better manage potential Ebola cases and patients with other infectious diseases.

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane is the response center for Region X, which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.

The department will use the first-year’s installment of $2.4 million to build capacity at Sacred Heart, which plans to establish a 10-bed isolation unit.

The grant is part of a federally funded project to build a national network of special pathogen treatment centers.

The first-year’s grant will be followed by smaller amounts in the next four years, totaling $3.25 to $4.6 million.

http://www.krem.com/story/news/local/spokane-county/2015/06/13/sacred-heart-gets-24-grant-for-ebola-preparations/71196768/

Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States

Texas

Galveston awarded Ebola treatment area

Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States the federal government has designated nine hospitals across the country to be designated treatment centers, including the University Of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

UTMB has been a center for infectious disease research for decades, and was already chosen as an Ebola treatment center by the state of Texas. But the federal designation means UTMB will get more than $3.25 million over the next five years to train staff members and buy protective suits and equipment.

Each of the nine hospitals will become a go-to Ebola treatment center for a specific region.

UTMB will accept Ebola patients from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and New Mexico. All the hospitals will be required to accept patients within eight hours of being notified, must be able to treat at least two Ebola patients at the same time, and have the ability to handle Ebola-contaminated waste.

The hospitals will also be able to treat patients with other severe, highly infectious diseases.

http://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/news/utmb-in-galveston-wins-national-ebola-designation-from-federal-government/?utm_content=buffer19cca&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States

Michigan

Michigan hospitals admits Ebola patients Ebola Virus Outbreak Map

Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has established three national Ebola training and prevention centers, and the state of Michigan also recently received more than $5.5 million to battle the virus.

But is the funding is needed now that the threat is waning? The short answer from local health officials is yes.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “the 2014 Ebola epidemic is the largest in history, affecting multiple countries in West Africa.” Those countries include Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

As of March, Michigan’s health departments have continually monitored more than 100 people who traveled to West Africa for Ebola symptoms. None have been diagnosed with the disease.

“I think that ever since the cases left the United States or there were no more cases in the United States, we kind of forgot about it,” said Brian Hartl, an epidemiologist with the Kent County Health Department. “I think just the fact that we kind of put it in the background a little bit kind of speaks to the need for it, ’cause I think that’s kind of human nature to put something behind you if you don’t see it all the time. And with Ebola, obviously, you always need to be prepared.”

Hartl said that though the West African threat is ebbing, there is still a need for additional funding and training.

“I don’t think it’s an overreaction,” said Hartl. “It may come across that way, but I think, again, we’re still preparing for Ebola.”

Hartl said that the preparations are for Ebola and whatever else may be on the horizon, like avian influenza and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

“The world is a smaller place now. Something can get from Korea or Thailand or other parts of the country to our front doorstep,” Hartl said. “These days you don’t know what you’re dealing with sometimes, and to be prepared for any situation is the best thing to do.”

Dirk Fillpot from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told 24 Hour News 8 via email that “ensuring that the public healthcare system is ready to treat diseases, whether Ebola or the next infectious disease that emerges, is vital to our nation’s health security.”

Michigan currently has three tier one hospitals that can identify, isolate, test and treat Ebola patients. One of those is Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital in downtown Grand Rapids.

http://woodtv.com/2015/07/06/michigan-gets-5-5m-to-prepare-for-ebola/

Ebola Treatment Facilities in United States

Maryland, North Dakota, Boston