As a resident and business owner in the Greater Boston area, I have always known how lucky I am to have some of the world’s premier hospitals located just minutes from my front door. Throughout my career I have had the privilege of knowing and working with the leaders of many of the first-class hospitals and healthcare networks that save lives and provide hopeon a daily basis. In light of the recent events that put a dark cloud over our city, it was these individuals that helped me see a silver lining.
As many as 170 people were brought to Boston area hospitals during and after the April 15 Marathon attack. Off-duty doctors and surgeons, as well as selfless other citizens jumped into action to help complete strangers get to safety. Victims in need of hospital care were expediently disbursed among eight different hospitals within city limits, and the first patient in need of emergency surgery was on the operating table in less than an hour. Every patient brought to a hospital from the frontlines of Boylston Street survived. Despite all of the horror that occurred throughout that week, the actions and preparedness of the first responders and medical community give us all a reason to be proud.
The conditions that doctors experienced on Marathon Monday were equivalent to those found in war-ravaged Afghanistan or the streets of Port Au-Prince, Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Unbelievably, these same traumatic events helped Boston hospitals prepare for an emergency event of this scale and magnitude. We’re now hearing stories about how, as a result of past events, hospital personnel underwent extensive emergency response training. Medical workers extended their shifts through all hours of the night; physicians assumed the roles of emergency commanders and military-style coding systems were used to facilitate easier communication.
Employees were connected to social media outlets thereby receiving the quickest updates imaginable. In fact, when news of the blasts broke on Twitter, personnel at each hospital campus initiated protocol for relocating patients to make room for the dozens of arriving victims in need of emergency surgery and care. The preparedness planning and emergency response drills saved lives here in Boston, yet when asked about the bravery and patriotism they exhibited that day, hospital staff says that they were simply doing their jobs.
Ten days after the Marathon attack, one area hospital, Spaulding Rehab, was scheduled to move from its West End location to an all-new, state-of-the-art facility in the Charlestown Navy Yard. Despite having 18 new patients and more than 100 patients already in its care, Partners Healthcare proudly and efficiently moved forward with the move on April 25.
In a stroke of good luck (or more realistically a sign of the leadership and commitment of Partners’ Planning and Development team), the new Spaulding Rehab Hospital is already being lauded as an industry leader in patient care and prosthetic technology. With the new hospital built and ready-to-go, Spaulding provided a safe, comfortable place for trauma victims to rehabilitate both physically and emotionally after an unusually trying period of time.
At the hospital’s grand opening, Spaulding’s Chairman got it right when said: “I am extraordinarily grateful that we are supported here by the best medical care community in the world. We have never needed them more.” Those of us in the design and construction community often look at our projects as brick and mortar; one completed, on to the next. It is refreshing to look a bit deeper and know that we are all building facilities that save lives every day.
John Cannistraro, Jr. is the President of J.C. Cannistraro, LLC