New hospital will be on the move

Jace Radke

Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 | 9:51 a.m.

The Nevada Hospital Association's new hospital has space for 50 beds, includes defibrillators, ventilators and other medical equipment, air conditioning and heating. But it has no address.

The 4,000-square-foot disaster medical facility is designed to be functional anywhere it is needed in the state within 24 hours of a medical emergency, natural disaster or terrorist attack.

In tests this week the hospital, a tent-like facility with a vinyl shell over an aluminum skeleton, was assembled and ready for use within six hours at Sunset Park.

"The impetus for this is terror preparedness, but we can also use it for other medical emergencies such as a pandemic flu outbreak," said Dr. Joe Heck, medical director of hospital preparedness for the Nevada Hospital Association.

The facility is based on mobile hospitals and laboratories used by the Air Force and costs about $350,000 through the manufacturer BLU-MED Response Systems.

The hospital association used federal grant money awarded by the Health Resource Services Administration to purchase the mobile hospital facility. Including medical equipment, the hospital association spent about $600,000 on the hospital.

The facility is made up of six smaller modular tents that can be connected to make the entire hospital, said Dr. Christopher Lake, hospital association director of hospital preparedness.

"The plan is to buy two more of these that can all be interconnected as needed," Lake said. "We want to have one in Clark County, one in Washoe County and one for rural Nevada."

Lake said he expects that a second 400-square-foot facility will be purchased by the end of the year, and that the third will have to wait for additional federal funding.

"It gives us a place where we can take injured people and not be competing with other important social service needs that may arise in a disaster situation," Lake said. "We have the convention centers and other places that would be available during an emergency, but this is a dedicated medical facility."

The hospitals, which look like a cross between a military bunker and a tent, can be transported on two flatbed tractor-trailers or airlifted by the National Guard to where they are needed.

Heck said the medical equipment for the mobile hospitals is being used at hospitals around the state instead of sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

"It allows the hospital staffs who might be manning this hospital to become familiar with the ventilators and cardiac monitors that we use in this facility, and at the same time gives the hospitals another piece of equipment to use," Heck said.

The mobile hospital is designed to stand up under snow, extreme heat, sandstorms and other weather. It includes areas for triage, intensive care, immunization and ambulatory care.

The hospital makes use of ambulance cots with wheels for easy movement of patients. Hanging next to each of the beds on the tent's aluminum frame is a bag with mesh pouches sewn to the outside to hold different medical instruments and medications.

While the stark interior looks like a clean room where scientists might work to contain an infectious disease, the hospital does circulate outside air through it's portable heating and cooling units creating an environment that is comparable to a hospital emergency room in terms of sterility, Heck said.

"It looks kind of austere when you compare it to a hospital but when you compare it to a hallway in an emergency room or out on the street it looks pretty good," Heck said.