Dr. David Adinaro is the chief medical officer of the East Orange-Alternate Care Site in East Orange, New Jersey. It’s a new location for him, and one he and his staff recently moved into after working for over a month at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey. The center, called Field Medical Station-Secaucus, had been converted into a temporary medical facility capable of holding 250 patients. Its goal was to ease the burden on local hospitals overwhelmed by coronavirus patients by treating the COVID convalescent, those in the last 5 to 7 days of their hospital stay. The new location has amenities that can accommodate patients with more complex nursing needs, and since it has multiple floors, can accept patients both with and without COVID-19.
Since April 8th, Dr. Adinaro and his team have treated and released more than 300 patients. In this episode, he talks about the experience of being on the frontlines of the pandemic, why systems engineering matters in healthcare, and the struggle that so many providers feel during this time, about whether or not they're doing enough.