The Chester County Hospital team worked tirelessly to open three floors in the new patient Pavilion early (the floors weren’t expected to open fully until late spring) to create dedicated space to care specifically for COVID patients. The teams on 2P, 3P, and 4P have done an amazing job.
When COVID-19 began to approach the Philadelphia region in early March, Chester County Hospital was just months away from completing its 99-room inpatient pavilion, the centerpiece of its $300-million expansion. The first part of the pavilion, where the hospital’s new main entrance is located, opened in January. The remainder of the building was scheduled to open gradually over the next several months. Wanting to be prepared for any potential surge of COVID cases, a decision was made to hasten the pace of construction and dedicate three of the pavilion’s floors to treating COVID-19 patients, including one floor as a COVID intensive care unit.
Even though the building was approximately 85 to 90 percent complete at that time, Randy J. Scott, the hospital’s plant operations manager and fire marshal, said that getting it up and ready for patients was truly a collaborative effort between the hospital and its construction partners. “They worked 24/7 to make that happen.” For example, they had to make sure every COVID patient room had negative air flow (ie, air is exhausted out of the room and the building). “We took it a step further and put the entire building into a negative pressure state, which required some changes to the building’s engineering.” Later, as the recommendations changed, the building was reverted to its original design with two negative-pressure rooms per floor.
The CCH effort occurred in parallel with another accelerated construction project downtown — at HUP East, also known as the Pavilion, where 120 rooms were made patient-ready in order to expand capacity for COVID patients in HUP West if it were needed, more than a year ahead of the new building’s planned opening.
As Chester County Hospital leaders consider a long-term plan for a future without a COVID-19 vaccine, Scott said CCH’s newly operational pavilion to be a boost to the surrounding community however it’s used. “It immediately proved its worth when we were planning for the worst-case scenario,” he said. “And its value will grow as it becomes fully operational.”