Ebola Preparedness Protocols

Message from the Emory Healthcare Executive Team

Emory Healthcare is committed to sharing our processes and learning on how to provide safe, effective care for patients with Ebola Virus Disease. To that end, we have created the Emory Healthcare Ebola website, which includes our policies, procedures and tools we have developed within Emory Healthcare to enable our physicians and staff to deal safely and effectively with various risk categories of patients who could be or are infected with the Ebola virus. We are posting and sharing our information on this website as quickly as possible, with the hope that it can help other health care systems develop their own Ebola readiness plans. It is essential that these protocols be adapted and tailored to individual circumstances and contexts. While we have had the privilege of operating a Serious Communicable Diseases Unit for the past 12 years, we think the key to safe care of these patients is not the unit itself, but rather the training, drills, continuous adherence to infection control measures and refinement of the protocols that we have implemented for many years. We also want to stress that, while we have experience with our policies and procedures related to caring for patients in our Serious Communicable Diseases Unit, the triage and screening procedures related to Ebola Virus Disease are as new for us as they are for you, and, therefore, we are in the process of implementing them.
 
We fully acknowledge the risk factors that make this area of health care very challenging for any organization. However, we firmly believe that all of American health care needs some level of preparedness for Ebola and other types of communicable diseases that can always impact us at any point in time. Further, many large hospitals may well need to be prepared to treat Ebola-infected patients in their communities, as the capacity nationally with the few current treatment centers remains extremely limited. We also acknowledge that many internal and external sources were used to compile the information on this site, and we thank all those individuals and organizations.
 
We sincerely hope that you find the information on this site useful. Please check back frequently, as this site will be updated as we continue to learn. If you have any comments or feedback as to how this information can be improved, please email communications@emoryhealthcare.org. Thank you.

Please note that the materials on this site are available only as reference and for informational purposes only. The information and materials on this site are designed to support, but not replace, training in the care of patients with Ebola Virus Disease.

This website was created by Melanie De Gennaro, Corporate Director, Emory Healthcare Communications; Nancye Feistritzer, CNO, Emory University Hospital; Bryce Gartland, M.D., Chief Executive Officer, Emory University Hospital; and Elizabeth Sprouse, Senior Communications Manager, Emory Healthcare Communications.

Thank you to the Emory Healthcare team members who contributed to the content of this site.