AUGUSTA — MaineGeneral Medical Center administrators on Thursday identified two rooms in the almost year-old hospital as suitable for temporarily housing patients suffering from the Ebola virus.
The rooms are at the end of a work flow area and “not in the main flow of patients and staff,” said Dr. Steve Diaz, the hospital’s chief medical officer.
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Chuck Hays, chief executive officer of MaineGeneral Health, the hospital’s parent corporation, said Thursday that MaineGeneral is working with MaineHealth and other hospitals in the state to decide where it would be most suitable to keep Ebola patients.
“We’re all sharing and all working very well together,” Hays said.
The transmission in the United States of the deadly Ebola virus has hospitals reviewing their readiness policies.
Diaz said the hospital is following guidance from both the state and federal Centers for Disease Control and is receiving updates almost daily.
At Inland Hospital in Waterville, officials say they too follow CDC guidelines.
Kathy Knight, a registered nurse who is director of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems Center for Emergency Preparedness, said members of their system make a plan for infection control that evolves along with the recommendations of the CDC and World Health Organization.
“Currently all of our hospitals have policies and procedures in place for infectious disease management that are consistent with CDC guidelines,” she said.
She said the health system is anticipating the federal CDC will make changes to its guidelines as the Ebola outbreak continues and it decides on new best practices.
In the event someone showed symptoms of Ebola in the emergency room, Knight said they would be evaluated and then if believed to have Ebola, isolated with health care workers wearing personal protective gear.
The new hospital in north Augusta has 15 negative-pressure patient rooms that are suitable for housing patients suffering from illnesses whose transmission is airborne, such as tuberculosis. That is considered the highest level of isolation, Diaz said.
The Ebola virus, however, is transmitted generally through direct contact with body fluids from someone who is suffering from the disease or who recently died from it or from contact with surfaces or objects contaminated by those fluids, according to a handout from the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress.
“The level of protection (for hospital personnel) is called droplet level,” said Diaz. “Other diseases fall into that category as well.”
Hospital employees do annual competency testing on personal protective equipment, said Hays, and some of those are in use daily as people need different levels of protection when handling different patients.
“Viral hemorrhagic fever is not usually seen in the U.S. — until this last month,” Diaz said. Those viruses, which include Ebola, have high mortality rates.
MaineGeneral also has created Ebola screening questions that can be used to respond to telephone inquiries and in the emergency department that include symptoms and travel history. If any person coming to the hospital is suspected of having the virus, the protocol includes having the hospital worker call the Maine Centers for Disease Control while sequestering the patient and while wearing personal protective equipment.
“We’re obviously taking this very seriously and also plugging the flu vaccinations because that’s going to kill a lot more people than the Ebola virus,” Hays said. “We’re trying to hit them both at the same time.”
Recommendations for preventing the spread of disease include avoiding contact with infected patients and washing hands frequently.
“Ebola has obviously raised everyone’s awareness for emergency preparedness,” said Dr. Stephen Sears, who was the state’s epidemiologist until March, and is currently chief of staff at the VA Maine Healthcare Systems-Togus. He said most hospitals are pulling out their plans and reviewing them.
“At Togus we pulled them out a few weeks ago,” he said. “We operate a hospital as well as eight big clinics throughout the state, so we have multiple points of entry.”
He said the VA system currently has a three-pronged focus: providing education, ensuring the right equipment is in place (including the right protection for health care providers), and asking the right screening questions.
He said anyone suspected of having Ebola within the Togus system would likely be transferred to a facility offering a higher level of care.
Sears said the response to the threat of Ebola is somewhat similar to the state’s emergency preparations in response to the H1N1 influenza strain in 2009.
“When it was first developing as a disease, we didn’t know how severe or how infectious it was going to be,” he said.
With regard to Ebola, Sears said, “One thing I’m trying to do is emphasize appropriate preparedness and trying to minimize the hysterical and overanxious aspects of this. There’s only one patient and a couple of health care workers (infected). While awful, it’s not to the extent it is elsewhere.”
Morning Sentinel reporter Kaitlin Schroeder contributed to this report.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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