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How surgery centers can help frontline hospitals in the fight against coronavirus | Opinion

Our new emergency mission includes acting in preparedness to become a general surgical hospital, in order to help decompress the ERs and hospitals taking care of the primary victims.

William C. Meyers, founder of the Vincera Institute.
William C. Meyers, founder of the Vincera Institute.Read moreVincera Institute

Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article titled “There’s a Pandemic. Is This a Time for Tommy John Surgery? offering a glimpse into the difficult issues facing healthcare workers within today’s coronavirus environment.

At the Vincera Institute, our work caters to sports, workman’s compensation and everyday injuries that occur here in Philadelphia and elsewhere. In the wake of this pandemic, we have shifted our present-day policies and adopted a new mind-set and we urge other centers to follow suit.

Our team at the Institute and its Surgical Center now have an additional purpose: To implement our emergency preparedness plan accepted by Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health Rachel Levine and DOH Ambulatory Director Garrison Gladfelter.

We are now at war. Therefore, we in the profession must provide front-line and backfield support against this viral enemy. Now soldiers, we are applying wartime priorities as a military hospital remote from the war’s front. Our goal is to fulfill a dual mission: 1) Continue to function as a hospital with its original mission for the people whom we have been treating and now defending; and 2) Function now as a support hospital to help win this war.

Our new emergency mission includes acting in preparedness to become a general surgical hospital, in order to help decompress the ERs and hospitals taking care of the primary victims. Therefore, we have developed a priority list for surgical cases to work in conjunction with Thomas Jefferson, Temple University and local other hospitals. This list parallels military situations.

Here is our surgical care priority list for the surgical staff:

  1. Keep our staff healthy and functional and maintenance of functional OR activity.

  2. Get active duty healthcare workers, such as doctors and nurses, back to the front lines, no matter the ailment — fractures, joint issues, appendicitis, gallbladder disease, etc.

  3. Get life-sustaining staff, such as transporters, police, firemen, grocery store employees, back to work.

  4. Care for urgent, non-viral surgical patients to preserve occupancy at ERs and traditional hospitals caring for coronavirus patients.

  5. Care for other urgent conditions that might reasonably be made worse by waiting four to six weeks to reschedule or pain that might lead to an ER visit.

  6. Put on hold during the surge the more purely elective cases.

This emergency preparedness plan adds a second purpose to our daily healthcare mission. To accomplish this purpose, we need to be flexible, yet definitive in our decision-making. This process reflects two maxims attributed to United States Marine training: 1) Prior to battle, plans remain important; once entering the battle, best-laid plans always change; and 2) In war, discussion is good. To win, we must be together.

William C. Meyers is president of the Vincera Institute in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.