Playbook on facility conversion released

The UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora are collaborating on research that will ultimately provide a comprehensive guide illustrating how to turn alternate care facilities, such as hotels, into hospitals. Funded by a $12.5 million grant from the Department of Defense, the research addresses a critical challenge in national preparedness.

The study’s first phase focused on developing a playbook to rapidly set up temporary hospital space in a hotel. Now in year two, the research team has completed a working prototype inside the Hyatt Regency Aurora-Denver Conference Center. Two fully functional intensive care units (ICUs) were constructed, one inside a conference room and another using hotel rooms as patient rooms with a nursing station, and imaging and lab services.

“The playbook provides a comprehensive look at how to convert a hotel into a hospital, including considerations from architectural approaches, contractor requirements, waiver/regulatory variances plus legal considerations, and medical care setup and management,” says Jason Persoff, M.D., UCHealth physician and associate professor at the Anschutz School of Medicine, who is co-leading the research. “It is an attempt to capture all the costs, pitfalls, benefits and needed infrastructure to create a successful conversion of a hotel into a functioning hospital with med-surg and ICU units.”

The playbook, which is available at hotel2hospital.info, includes checklists and tools to help emergency managers, hospital executives, and regional and local public health leaders successfully convert a hotel into a hospital.

“This project has been tremendously successful at improving our understanding of the realities of using a hotel as a hospital,” Persoff says. “While hotels have been used as medical facilities in the past, we have expanded what is possible at our alternate care facility by creating a true hospital environment capable of the full spectrum of care for most patients who would be cared for at a traditional hospital. We found out that we can successfully build out a hotel into a hospital in under a month if the appropriate waivers and variances were approved under a disaster declaration.”

Unlike temporary spaces like convention centers used during the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel model offers several advantages, including improved infection control and the ability to isolate patients.

The alternate care facility was in place for two weeks. The final phase of the research will focus on testing the model in other cities, refining and finalizing a comprehensive playbook, and developing algorithmic tools to help hospitals select appropriate surge solutions based on needs and resources