Rapid COVID Response

Working within a healthcare system and anticipating needs is innate to our team.

That approach became even more critical as the COVID pandemic rapidly spread across the U.S.

As cases spiked with little to no warning, our partners at OSF HealthCare faced urgent demands at their facilities around Illinois.

We worked in tandem to forecast where surges were expected and get equipment to those locations so we could convert regular patient rooms into isolation rooms within one to two days.

“We saw a wave coming, but nobody saw the size of the wave.”

In early March, when the pandemic accelerated stateside, it became clear that we needed to set a plan in motion – immediately.

Leaning on our experience working in occupied healthcare facilities, we doubled down and worked together, leveraging the knowledge of clinicians to develop the best solutions.

As with many supplies at the onset of the pandemic, there was a rush on equipment, so we used our national buying power to ensure we secured enough and partnered with general contractors to get greater access to materials and crew members.

Across the state, as cases spiked, hospital presidents would call us one day, and we’d dispatch crew members the next.

“Sometimes they’d called us and say, ‘As soon as we discharge this patient, we need you to convert the room.’ So, we’d circle the block on standby.”

We turned to equipment typically available to us on job sites: negative air machines, used to filter dust from construction areas, pumping filtered air out of buildings altogether.

In this case, we used them to create a negative pressure relationship within rooms, rerouting air out, so germs didn’t recirculate into the rest of the hospital.

Just outside of the isolation rooms, we used temporary plexiglass walls to construct small anterooms around the door. That allowed hospital staff to step in and close the door behind them, creating an airlock before going in or out of the patient’s room.

This technology enabled us to turn more than 100 patient rooms into temporary COVID isolation rooms.

In some cases, we took entire sections of a hospital ward and made it negative to the rest of the ward so staff could safely treat larger populations.

Every day at POINTCORE, we view ourselves as an extension of our clients, creating the environments they need to provide exceptional patient care.

This time, under extraordinary circumstances.