UMMS Affiliation
UMass Memorial Medical Center
Publication Date
2020-06-15
Document Type
Article Postprint
Disciplines
Health Services Administration | Infectious Disease | Pharmacy Administration, Policy and Regulation | Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences | Virus Diseases
Abstract
In the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the large number of cases of severe respiratory distress placed a significant burden on US healthcare systems. In Massachusetts, predictive modeling indicated that up to 15,000 hospital beds would be required to handle the case surge (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Massachusetts hospitals had a total of 11,000 licensed beds). This modeling suggested there would be a 4,000-bed shortage during the peak of hospitalizations for COVID-19, which was expected to occur within the first few weeks of April. Thus, mitigation strategies were developed to increase healthcare capacity. One of Massachusetts’ strategies entailed the development and utilization of field hospitals. On April 2, 2020, it was announced that a convention center in Worcester, MA, would be the location of the state’s first field hospital (FH). Through the collaboration of the US Army National Guard company based in Worcester and UMass Memorial Medical Center (UMMMC), the FH was quickly established. It was determined that on-site pharmacy services would be imperative to ensure that FH patients received optimal care.
Keywords
COVID-19, coronavirus, disaster planning, mobile health units, pandemics, public health
Rights and Permissions
© American Society of Health-System Pharmacists 2020. Accepted manuscript posted after 12 months as allowed by publisher's self-archiving policy at https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/access_purchase/rights_and_permissions/author_self_archiving_policy.
DOI of Published Version
10.1093/ajhp/zxaa211
Source
Wallis N, Gust C, Porter E, Gilchrist N, Amaral A. Implementation of field hospital pharmacy services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2020 Jun 15:zxaa211. doi: 10.1093/ajhp/zxaa211. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32539128. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
American journal of health-system pharmacy : AJHP : official journal of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
Related Resources
PubMed ID
32539128
Repository Citation
Wallis N, Gust C, Porter E, Gilchrist N, Amaral A. (2020). Implementation of field hospital pharmacy services during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 Publications by UMMS Authors. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxaa211. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/covid19/53
Included in
Health Services Administration Commons, Infectious Disease Commons, Pharmacy Administration, Policy and Regulation Commons, Virus Diseases Commons