Unit converted

Health care professionals and government officials alike hope Indiana is in the midst of its COVID-19 surge.

Whether that’s the case or not, IU Health Jay and the IU Health system at large are continuing to prepare for increased demand for medical care.

One of the pushes is to increase the amount of beds available to care for patients suffering from the disease caused by coronavirus. At IU Health Jay, that has meant repurposing a unit that was shut down earlier this year.

The hospital has converted the former behavioral health unit, which was closed at the end of January, into negative-pressure rooms for treatment of COVID-19.

Though the disease is not spread through the air but rather via droplets from sneezes and coughs, there are hospital procedures that can aerosolize the pathogen. Negative pressure rooms create a vacuum that makes sure air does not recirculate back into other areas of the hospital.

“It’s protecting other patients — potentially non-COVID patients — from risk of exposure,” said Dave Hyatt, president of IU Health critical access hospitals for the East Central region. “It’s not critical. We’re doing it out of an abundance of caution. But it is just one more extra step that we’ve taken.”

That increased the hospital’s number of negative-pressure beds from two — there regularly is one each in the emergency and med-surg departments — to a dozen.

The change is part of IU Health’s efforts to plan for a patient surge by region, including the sharing of staff and equipment. IU Health Jay is in the organization’s east-central region along with IU Health Blackford and IU Health Ball.

The organization’s preparation includes five daily phone calls for Hyatt involving planning specific to the hospitals in Jay and Blackford counties as well as the region as a whole, one with the IU Health executive team and one with the “incident command” team that is in charge of forecasting needs, setting up new services and providing data.

As of Sunday, IU Health hospitals housed a total of 231 patients confirmed to have COVID-19 and another 16 “people under investigation” still awaiting test results. It has discharged 362 patients treated for the disease.



IU Health Jay has taken care of several such patients. A few of those have been transferred to IU Health Ball, the second largest hospital in the system.

“Our goal is to treat COVID-19 patients at Jay to the level that we can,” said Hyatt. “We take care of many COVID-19 patients that do not need a higher level of care. Many of these patients get well and are discharged back into their home safely and appropriately.

“For those that look like they may need more intensive care or may need to be ventilated, we transfer them to IU Health Ball, where there are more resources.”

In terms of those resources, 36% of IU Health’s ventilators and 57% of its intensive care unit beds are in use.

As for personal protective equipment, the IU Health system is well-stocked via its warehouse on the west side of Indianapolis, Hyatt said.

“The strength of IU Health has been huge for IU Health Jay,” he added. “A lot of small, rural hospitals are struggling. We are doing fine as a health system.”

Hyatt also credited the community for its support. He mentioned that J Star Farms donated 1,000 masks to IU Health Jay and Cooper Farms gave $3,000 in gift certificates for employees.