The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) led the Tsoi Kobus Design team to consider how the lessons emerging from social distancing, creating emergency healthcare spaces, and providing care for the varied and vast patient population will impact future healthcare facility design. Today we look at Stan Poreda's concept for converting high school campuses to field hospitals.
Many regional hospitals are in close proximity, generally one to three miles, from spacious public or private schools. Utilizing educational facilities as remote locations of nearby hospitals will lessen the demand on urban hospitals.
State and healthcare officials are currently working assemble temporary medical support facilities to treat patients effected by COVID-19. These piecemeal strategies have the inherent weakness of not providing for the complex needs of a temporary hospital. Educational campuses provide space in excess: gymnasiums, cafeterias, classrooms, adjacent playing fields, and parking lots. These education facilities are often the largest public infrastructure in a city or town. Police, fire, and building departments possess detailed knowledge of their infrastructure that provides a strong team to support the needs of a temporary hospital.
A typical high school campus has space in abundance to overcome the challenges of infection control, supply and movement of patients, areas for large mechanical equipment, and space for beds for patients and care providers. The campus is also set up to accommodate the influx of hundreds of people with available facilities such as toilets/showers, food preparation, and laundry. Surrounding these facilities are expanses of paved parking and open fields that can accommodate large air handlers, emergency transportation and flatbed trucks to deliver supplies and food.
Fighting this pandemic—regardless of strategy—will be an experiment. This large-scale effort offers us the ability to uncover what works while minimizing logistics. The gymnasium, the classroom, the cafeteria offer model opportunities for adaptation.
Can a classroom be converted into a six-bay patient room? Can we create negative air with a dedicated unit sitting outside on the ground with duct through a window? Can a gymnasium be a large patient bed floor while also offering comfort? Can these spaces be modified to be a place of care and healing?
