Article Text
Abstract
Emilia-Romagna was one of the most affected Italian regions during the COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020. We describe here the profound regional, provincial and municipal changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to cope with the numbers of patients presenting with COVID-19 illness, as well as coping with the ongoing need to care for patients presenting with non-COVID-19 emergencies. We focus on the structural and functional changes in one particular hospital within the city of Bologna, the regional capital, which acted as the central emergency hub for time-sensitive pathologies for the province of Bologna. Finally, we present the admissions profile to our emergency department in relation to the massive increase of infected patients observed in our region as well as the organisational response to prepare for the second wave of the pandemic.
- efficiency
- emergency care systems
- emergency department management
- epidemiology
- infectious diseases
- SARS
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Footnotes
Handling editor Ellen J Weber
Twitter @LorenzoGamberi6, @marco_tarta, @vale_chiarini
Contributors CC, NC, VB and GG designed and supervised the implementation of the functional and structural changes at our institution. LG ideated and designed the article structure and extracted the ED flow data. MT, VC, FS and FM wrote the article and designed the infographics. FS, NC and CL reviewed the article.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
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Competing interests None declared.
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