Lessons Learned From an Analysis of the Emergency Medical Services' COVID-19 Drive-Through Testing Facilities in Israel.

Itay Zmora,Nisim Mishraki,Evan Avraham Alpert,Uri Shacham,Eli Jaffe

doi:10.1017/dmp.2021.50

Abstract

One strategy for the containment of a pandemic is mass testing. Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Organization undertook this mission by operating a nationwide series of drive-through testing complexes. The objective of this study is to learn lessons from an analysis of these centers. Data from 198 stationary and mobile drive-through complexes from March 20, 2020, through October 17, 2020, were analyzed for temporal and geographic factors, and cost. Also, an operational improvement program was implemented and analyzed. A total of 931,074 patients were sampled in the MDA drive-through system: 46.9% in stationary complexes, and 53.1% in mobile complexes. The optimized cost per patient of home testing was estimated at 74.5 USD compared with 6.55 USD in the drive-through centers. An operational improvement program lowered the total sampling time from 128 s/patient to 98 s and decreased the total cost per patient from 6.55 USD to 6.27 USD. The EMS led drive-through complexes were cost-effective and efficient in performing large numbers of viral tests, especially when compared with home testing. Established concepts in clinical operations should be implemented to increase the number of persons that can be tested and decrease cost.

Highlights

Cite this article: Zmora I, Alpert EA, Shacham U, Mishraki N, Jaffe E
The policy of the Ministry of Health (MOH) was to conduct mass testing while preventing patients with disease from entering clinics and emergency departments to reduce the chance of infection of medical staff and other patients
The MOH directed Magen David Adom (MDA) to significantly increase the number of tests

Summary

Introduction

Cite this article: Zmora I, Alpert EA, Shacham U, Mishraki N, Jaffe E. Lessons learned from an analysis of the emergency medical services’ COVID-19 drive-through testing facilities in israel. Creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Organization undertook this mission by operating a nationwide series of drive-through testing complexes. Data from 198 stationary and mobile drive-through complexes from March 20, 2020, through October 17, 2020, were analyzed for temporal and geographic factors, and cost. An operational improvement program was implemented and analyzed. An operational improvement program lowered the total sampling time from 128 s/patient to 98 s and decreased the total cost per patient from 6.55 USD to 6.27 USD. Established concepts in clinical operations should be implemented to increase the number of persons that can be tested and decrease cost

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion