UMass Memorial closing DCU Center field hospital

Photo | Grant Welker The DCU Center in Worcester

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By Grant Welker

The field hospital set up at Worcester's DCU Center is winding down operations with fewer than a dozen coronavirus patients in the past few days.

UMass Memorial Medical Center, which is overseeing the field hospital's operations, is in the process of closing the facility while working with city and state officials, hospital administrators said Friday in an online meeting with staff. The field hospital will be closed as early as next week.

The DCU Center was set up in early April to host more than 200 beds for coronavirus patients who didn't need to be in intensive care or an acute-care setting such as at UMass Memorial or Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester.

The center was the first of its kind in Massachusetts to help hospitals accommodate an expected flood of patients during the peak of the pandemic. Although UMass Memorial and Saint Vincent Hospital have far more inpatient cases now than they did when the field hospital was established, the facility never came close to using its full capacity.

The center had 15 patients on Monday, and 10 through the remainder of the week, according to city officials' daily updates. The center always had fewer than 100 patients, and during the peak of cases there in late April, most of them were homeless residents. Homeless patients were moved on May 5 to a state-run facility in Northampton.

The facility will not be broken down so that it could be used again if needed, UMass Memorial officials said. More than 150 patients have been discharged from the facility.

UMass Memorial had 173 inpatient cases of confirmed or suspected coronavirus as of Thursday, and Saint Vincent another 55, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Combined, 77 of those patients were in intensive care.

Worcester County surpassed 500 deaths on Thursday, with 8,555 total cases. Thursday represented a new high of single-day deaths with 35.

UMass Memorial is also starting to plan for needing fewer ICU beds on its Memorial and University campuses.

Hospital leaders are planning now for closing a post-anesthesia care unit on the Memorial Campus, and to resume normal operations there once the count of coronavirus patients drops below 10 for seven days. Two units on site are slated to be returned to non-coronavirus care.

At the University Campus, eight critical-care beds that had been used for coronavirus patients are being returned to general use. Two units there are also slated to be returned to non-coronavirus use.

The hospital converted many patient beds to dedicated coronavirus use so that such patients could be grouped together for better care and safety, including converting patient rooms to negative pressure to keep potentially contaminated room air from spreading elsewhere.

UMass Memorial has reported a total of 117 coronavirus deaths. Sister hospital HealthAlliance-Clinton Hospital has had 30 deaths, and another 15 have been reported at Marlborough Hospital.

In all, the UMass Memorial system has reported 4,250 coronavirus cases.