With traditional hospitals filling up with coronavirus patients, and the worst days expected ahead, field hospitals have opened across the state to alleviate the pressure on the healthcare system.
Dr. Eric Dickson, the president and chief executive officer of UMass Memorial Health Care — the system responsible for operating the DCU Center field hospital in Worcester — said the partnership between the city, state and his organization enabled the facility to go up in just eight days.
“When everyone is focused on a common mission, saving as many lives as we can from this horrible virus — it’s amazing all the barriers that seem to just dissolve,” Dickson told Jim Braude on WGBH News’ Greater Boston Wednesday.
The Worcester field hospital, which can hold up to 250 patients, and a 1,000-bed facility at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, have already started caring for coronavirus patients. Three more alternative hospitals are expected to open in the coming days at UMass Lowell, UMass Dartmouth and Joint Base Cape Cod.
Dickson also noted the hospital couldn’t have come together as quickly as it did without the volunteers who stepped up from all over the state.
So far, Dickson said, Worcester hospitals have kept up with the level of coronavirus patients.
“In central Massachusetts, we have 250 or so patients that are in the hospital for coronavirus," he said. "In fact, we’re using the field hospital primarily for patients from the Boston region that has started to fill up before us. It seems like the peaks are happening in western and eastern [Massachusetts] first.”
On the issue of re-opening the economy, Dickson mentioned that the progress the state has made on treating the virus, will be eliminated should people return to normal life too soon.
“Our mortality will be significantly lower than you see in Italy and other places because our healthcare system here in Massachusetts has been able to keep up with demand in terms of the level of disease. If we re-open too soon, that’s not going to be the case. And we’re going to see really bad things happen,” Dickson said.
Recently, Dickson and his wife, Dr. Catherine Jones-Dickson, announced they would be donating 100 percent of their salaries to his system’s Emergency Assistance Support for Employees Fund. The fund provides financial assistance for UMass Memorial Health Care workers.
“Cathy and I trained here at UMass med school, we had our children here, we’ve been a part of this organization for the better part of three decades. And this is its toughest moment and our lowest-paid employees … are really struggling," he said. "So, we thought it was the best time for us to start to give back."
