The U.S. could be on a crash course of increasing ICU capacity--if it had the will.
“We could increase production five-fold in a 90- to 120-day period,” says Chris Kiple, chief executive of Ventec Life Systems, a Bothell, Wash. firm that makes ventilators used in hospitals, homes and ambulances. He’d have to tool up production lines, train assemblers and testers and get parts. Accelerating the parts delivery might be the toughest task, he says.
It is hard to predict the shape of the pandemic curve in the U.S., and thus what the peak demand for ICU capacity will be. But the vision of a grim outcome emerges from the chaos in Italian hospitals, and from a study of ventilator needs done in 2015 by a New York State task force. The study estimated that in a 1918-level pandemic, the state’s need for ventilators would peak at 18,600.
Kiple says the the typical supplier is producing custom parts for many different manufacturing clients. He’s hopeful that during an emergency those other clients could be put on hold. In a crisis, the hospitals will have to get creative. Maybe they will relax some of their rules on credentials. A report yesterday by the critical-care society postulated an emergency staffing that has one ICU doctor overseeing 96 patients on ventilators. That doctor would command a staff of four non-ICU MDs brought in from other assignments, each of them looking after eight respiratory therapists, four ICU nurses and 12 non-ICU nurses . It would be a stretch.
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