From the Front Lines of COVID-19 at HSS: An Oral History
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RESPONSE TO COVID-19/COMMENTARY
From the Front Lines of COVID-19 at HSS: An Oral History C. Ronald MacKenzie, MD & Joy Jacobson, MFA
Received: 21 September 2020/Accepted: 21 September 2020 * The Author(s) 2020
Keywords COVID-19 . pandemic response . infectious disease . oral history Introduction In mid-March 2020, at the start of New York City’s battle against COVID-19, the disease caused by the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), leaders at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) realized that in order to protect both patients and staff, the hospital would have to stop performing all nonessential surgery. Within 2 weeks, as the city’s facilities ran out of room to care for the crush of COVID-19 patients, the hospital’s leadership decided that HSS would transform itself into a hospital capable of treating COVID-19 patients. On April 10, during one of the deadliest weeks of the pandemic in New York City, HSS president and CEO Louis Shapiro discussed “fighting the fight so we can win the war” and what “new normal” might become after the pandemic. “It would be a crime to let this crisis go to waste by not taking advantage of what we’ve learned so that we can be better on the other side,” he said. “We want everyone who can to take advantage of what we’ve learned.” When asked what he’d been surprised by, Mr. Shapiro answered: “When you think you couldn’t be inspired by people anymore, and every day you see people coming together even more—I’ve never seen anything like it. There is nothing quite like being in a crisis of epic proportion and at the very same time being inspired by what people are doing” (Fig. 1). C. R. MacKenzie, MD Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Hospital for Special Surgery, 535 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, USA J. Jacobson, MFA (*) Education Institute, Hospital for Special Surgery, 535 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Here we present first-person reflections on the battle against COVID-19 at HSS. Distilled from interviews conducted during the surge period of the crisis in New York City, March through May 2020, the oral history and letters from the front lines reveal the trajectory of the hospital’s transformation.—C. Ronald MacKenzie, MD, guest editor; Joy Jacobson, managing editor
March 31, 2020 “Coronavirus may kill 100,000 to 240,000 in U.S. despite actions, officials say.” The New York Times, March 31, 2020.
Bryan Kelly, MD, MBA, HSS surgeon in chief and medical director It’s March 31, I think. Tuesday. The days have started to blur into one another. Every day has been a whirlwind in terms of trying to figure out our best way to respond to this crisis. Two weeks ago we made what seemed like a monumental decision—to stop all nonessential surgery. We reduced our volume from close to 130 operations a day to less than 15. We’ve made several other, equally significant decisions; probably the biggest was to start accepting COVID-19 patients and provide ventilatory ICU support. We’ve increased our critical care
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