Abstract

Globally, the capacity of healthcare systems across continents has been strained and put to the test with the emergence of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The timely need to ensure the availability of healthcare facilities to isolate and manage the surge in COVID-19 cases without overwhelming existing hospital capacity has posed challenges in many countries. In this paper, we discuss the conceptualisation, preparations and operationalisation of a community healthcare facility that was set up within a short time frame to attend to the convalescent needs of a large number of COVID-19 patients in the early phase of handling the pandemic. In the first month of operations, we monitored a total of 2129 clinical encounters, with the majority of patients between 17–35 years of age and between day 2 to day 6 of illness upon admission. Overall, there was a good outcome for the patients, with only 2.3% requiring transfer back to restructured hospitals. There was also no mortality. We hope that the sharing of our experiences of the challenges and learning lessons gleaned may be useful to guide individuals in planning for the future preparedness of healthcare systems in managing pandemics.

Highlights

  • Over the one month of community care facility (CCF) operations by JurongHealth Campus (JHC), there was a total of 1341 admissions

  • The operational structure, workflows, protocols and tested strategies gleaned from this experience can be systematically chronicled and templated to serve as ready trialed and tested standard operating procedures that can be adapted for quick implementation to address potential future public health disease outbreaks or pandemics

  • The attention to preparation, organisation and day-to-day processes resulted in the smooth flow within the CCF

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Summary

Introduction

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared Coronavirus disease 2019. (COVID-19) to be a global pandemic [1]. COVID-19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and the disease rapidly spread globally and was beyond the four million mark by 9 May 2020 [2]. In Singapore, the first case definition was established on 2 Jan 2020 and the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed on 23 Jan 2020.

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