In the event that hospitals in the East Tennessee region reach capacity because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ETSU has partnered with local and regional organizations to provide on-campus facilities as housing for healthcare workers and makeshift medical facilities as two parts of a five-pronged emergency plan.
“We have an emergency plan, not only for this pandemic, but for any pandemic, which includes facilities for healthcare itself,” ETSU Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Ross said. “So, if we needed beds or a certain type of medical care, housing is a piece of it.”
In an agreement between ETSU and Washington County EMS and Ballad Health, an entire wing of Lucille Clement Hall will be available to house healthcare workers and first responders if hospitals reach capacity.
This plan was initiated by Ballad Health and the State of Tennessee when the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the health department and other State of Tennessee offices asked ETSU if they had beds to donate and facilities the state could use if the hospital system reaches capacity.
“If we needed beds, if the hospital system were treating so many people that they ran out of capacity, could we serve certain functions?” Ross said ETSU was asked. “And so, ETSU could. We have large gathering spaces, large areas. We’ve looked at those to covert them. We have residence halls – we have over 3,000 beds that we could move to another facility off-campus or on.”
No healthcare workers have been housed yet.
In addition to housing, Ross said they have also reviewed facilities on and off-campus that could be converted into medical facilities. ETSU’s Mountain States Health Alliance Athletic Center, also known as the Mini-Dome, is on the list of possibilities.
“The Dome is large; it’s a big open space,” Ross said. “It is definitely part of an emergency plan in an outbreak where capacity is used in all of our hospitals and others that could be used. And we have analyzed it, but again, the region would be in a severe outbreak before we’d do that because the best place is a hospital or another building, maybe a medical facility.”
Along with housing facilities for healthcare workers and converted medical facilities, other elements of the emergency plan have already begun, including the manufacturing of face shields, donation sites and COVID-19 testing sites.
In late March, with the help of Department of Engineering Chair Keith Johnson and Professor Bill Hemphill, ETSU’s College of Business and Technology and Department of Engineering partnered with THEC and STREAMWORKS to start make face shields for medical personnel using 3D printers on campus. According to ETSU CBAT Instagram and Facebook posts Wednesday, 1,900 face shields have been assembled and distributed as of last week.
Campus facilities have also been used as donation sites for personal protective equipment, including N95 masks, gloves, tie-back overalls, shoe coverings, hand sanitizer and disinfectants. Ross said they received over 2,000 items through two days of donations events.
According to Ross, 829 people were tested for COVID-19 on ETSU’s campus Sunday in partnership through the regional health department. Individuals tested did not have to be symptomatic or referred from a physician. This followed Gov. Bill Lee’s announcement that any Tennessean could get tested for free regardless of symptoms starting April 18. Elements of ETSU’s donation site and face-shield manufacturing initiatives were present during testing.
“So, on Sunday at our testing site, a lot of the healthcare workers were wearing the shields that we made, and healthcare workers were wearing gloves that were donated at ETSU through the people in our region,” Ross said. “And that’s fantastic to see people sacrifice some of their resources, and they believe in our health care system and our people here so much.”
For elements of the emergency plan that have not been used yet, like Lucille Clement and the Mini-Dome, Ross said he hopes we do not have to use them.
“Well, I hope a lot of the plans that we’ve put together never come to be used quite frankly,” Ross said. “I hope we don’t need to convert facilities into medical facilities. I hope we don’t need to house a lot of workers that could potentially be exposed, so I’ll start with that. So, it gives me comfort though, that we have a plan in place because it’s not overnight that you can convert electrical systems, mechanical systems and staffing, oxygen, medical equipment, beds into place, but we have those plans. So, there’s comfort that we have it. I just hope we never implement it. “
