TY - JOUR T1 - Establishing a COVID-19 treatment centre in Israel at the initial stage of the outbreak: challenges, responses and lessons learned JF - Emergency Medicine Journal JO - Emerg Med J DO - 10.1136/emermed-2020-209639 SP - emermed-2020-209639 AU - Elhanan Bar-On AU - Gad Segal AU - Gili Regev-Yochay AU - Galia Barkai AU - Asaf Biber AU - Avinoah Irony AU - Assaf Luttinger AU - Hindy Englard AU - Amir Grinberg AU - Eldad Katorza AU - Galia Rahav AU - Arnon Afek AU - Yitshak Kreiss Y1 - 2021/03/26 UR - http://emj.bmj.com/content/early/2021/03/26/emermed-2020-209639.abstract N2 - Anticipating the need for a COVID-19 treatment centre in Israel, a designated facility was established at Sheba Medical Center—a quaternary referral centre. The goals were diagnosis and treatment of patients with COVID-19 while protecting patients and staff from infection and ensuring operational continuity and treatment of patients with non-COVID. Options considered included adaptation of existing wards, building a tented facility and converting a non-medical structure. The option chosen was a non-medical structure converted to a hospitalisation facility suited for COVID-19 with appropriate logistic and organisational adaptations. Operational principles included patient isolation, unidirectional workflow from clean to contaminated zones and minimising direct contact between patients and caregivers using personal protection equipment (PPE) and a multimodal telemedicine system. The ED was modified to enable triage and treatment of patients with COVID-19 while maintaining a COVID-19-free environment in the main campus. This system enabled treatment of patients with COVID-19 while maintaining staff safety and conserving the operational continuity and the ability to continue delivery of treatment to patients with non-COVID-19. ER -