U.S. Field Hospitals: A Study on Public Health Emergency Response to COVID-19

With the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rapidly growing in the U.S., many states are experiencing a shortage of hospital—especially ICU—beds. In addition to discharging non-critical patients, expanding local hospitals’ capacity as well as re-opening closed healthcare facilities, these states are actively building or converting public venues into field hospitals to fill the gap¹. By studying these makeshift hospitals, we found that the states most severely impacted by the pandemic are fast at responding with the first wave of hospitals opening around the date of peak demand and the majority ready to use by the end of April. However, depending on the types of patients the field hospitals accept (COVID-19 vs. non-COVID-19) and how they are incorporated to local healthcare system, these field hospitals have utilization rate ranging from 100% to 0%. The field hospitals acting as alternative site to treat non-COVID-19 patients typically had low utilization rate and often faced the risk of COVID-19 outbreak in the facility. As overflow facilities, the field hospitals providing intensive care were highly relied on by local healthcare systems whereas the field hospitals dedicated to patients with mild symptoms often found it hard to fill the beds due to a combination of factors such as strict regulation on transferring patients from local hospitals, complication of health insurance discouraging health-seeking behavior, and effective public health measure to “flatten the curve” so that the additional beds were no longer needed.