Urgent Support for Improvised Treatment Facilities

As hospitals face a surge of patients, healthcare IT departments must extend services outside the corporate network so clinicians can access the applications they need to provide care. Solutions must be fast, simple, cost-effective and easy to deploy.

Proven solutions

Temporary patient care locations

WWT is helping several major organizations rapidly deploy temporary patient care locations to provide COVID-19 services. These partners include some of the largest health systems in the country, a major retailer and a government agency — all seeking to establish temporary care locations such as surge tents for triage, drive-through testing sites, and re-purposed hotels, dormitories, conference centers and arenas. Each of these locations required extending network access or providing enterprise-class Wi-Fi linked to a healthcare organization's network.

Leveraging our North American Integration Center, WWT teams identified and delivered the appropriate equipment and infrastructure to support response efforts. Within a matter of days, WWT configured and deployed systems for network connectivity, equipped sites with wireless infrastructure and scaled VPN access for secure voice, video and data connectivity. 

Solutions were deployed in a variety of locations and settings across the country, including remote care centers that were a significant distance from parent organizations or hospitals.

Our healthcare partners launched hundreds of fully connected locations nationwide in a matter of days with WWT's assistance. We continue assembling and distributing fully kitted solutions, allowing many more sites to be added on a regular basis.

Isolation room conversion

Another urgent need for healthcare organizations is expanding hospital capacity for patient treatment. This may include setting up improvised treatment locations within the hospital or converting existing rooms to provide a higher level of care. WWT is helping several major organizations convert regular hospital rooms into ICU or isolation rooms, allowing providers to monitor patients more closely while entering rooms less frequently. 

In response to the rapid spread of COVID-19, one large organization of healthcare providers needed to convert standard patient rooms into "quarantine rooms." Medical teams required remote video observation capabilities to provide around-the-clock care and communication to patients while minimizing staff exposure.

In less than eight hours, a WWT team provided the equipment and infrastructure to implement Meraki video cameras in standard patient rooms. Nursing leadership immediately approved the proof of concept, and six hours later, 16 standard rooms were converted into video-monitored, fully operational isolation rooms.

Within hours, the nursing team reported that the video solution was allowing them to reduce the rate of personal protective equipment (PPE) consumption, improve patient and staff communication, increase quality of care, optimize time management and increase patient satisfaction. 

In less than 24 hours, the new isolation rooms were at 95 percent capacity, and dozens of additional cameras are being implemented across the organization.

Outcomes

Healthcare providers must be able to care for their patients quickly and securely, regardless of location. This is especially true during times of crisis. Customized technology solutions can accelerate improvised treatment facilities and enable care under a variety of conditions and use cases.