Albany Med announces new walk up testing option
ALBANY, N.Y. » Albany Medical Center provided an update to its on-site testing protocols for COVID-19.
The hospital announced the addition of a new walk-up option for testing, along with its drivethru appointments and new information on staffing and supplies was made available as well.
“As we talked about last time, we are serving what we believe to be a very significant public health need by testing people in this area. And that’s happening at other hospitals as well,” Vice President for Medical Affairs and Medical Director at Albany Medical Center Dr. Dennis McKenna said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“There are two different ways that people can be tested for COVID-19 if they meet the clinical criteria here on this campus. There is one option, which is an appointment.
“If your physician believes that you meet the criteria to be tested, there’s an opportunity to schedule an appointment at a drivethru option outside and behind our emergency department. We also have a tent set up, it’s 30 by 120 feet and we have the opportunity for people there who don’t have an appointment to walk up and be tested if they meet the criteria there as well,” Dr. McKenna detailed on the two testing options.
Dr. McKenna also provided the number of tests being administered since the hospital began testing six days ago.
“In the last six days between those two testing sites we’ve seen 1,402 people that had been tested. [Tuesday], for example, through our drive-thru, we saw 327 people and in the tent, we saw 224,” McKenna explained.
“There are five patients who are in the hospital on medical floors who have tested positive for COVID-19. That means they do not need an ICU level of care. We do have a patient currently who is requiring ICU level of care,” Dr. McKenna added.
Dr. McKenna also says that those people looking for information on testing can visit their website as well at www.amc.edu.
Where hospital facility capacity is concerned, Dr. Ferdinand Venditti, Executive Vice President for System Care Delivery & Albany Medical Center Hospital
General Director, provided an overall assessment.
“Right now we have over 80 fully functional tested negative pressure rooms at Albany Medical Center hospital. They’re distributed across multiple nursing units, including our emergency department, so we can care for different types of patients in those particular rooms,” Dr. Venditti commented on the amount of available negative pressure rooms.
“We’ve also evaluated multiple other areas of the hospital that we now know that we can convert to negative pressure should that become necessary,” Dr. Venditti noted of the hospital’s capacity to expand if needed.
“We have over 70 adult ventilators in the hospital today. Fewer than half of them are being used. We were able to lease several additional units in the past couple of days,” Dr. Venditti added on the number of ventilators at the ready.
Dr. Venditti also detailed how the hospital is keeping staff and patients safe, as well as the amount of supplies they have.
“We’ve been tracking our sterile supplies for quite some time, literally two months now. We have been looking for alternate suppliers successfully, we’ve been stocking up where we can, we’ve been conserving where appropriate and we’ve been using reusable respirators that you’ve seen on TV that kind of cover your whole head,” Dr. Venditti said.
“We have adequate supplies of masks and gowns to allow our staff to safely provide care to our patients, something very important for our patients and the staff,” Dr. Venditti added.