In a parking lot next to a hospital in an Atlanta suburb, dozens of modular critical care units—made in a factory and delivered by truck—are being installed to help add space as COVID-19 cases continue to grow.
The prefab system, called STAAT Mod (Strategic, Temporary, Acuity-Adaptable Treatment), has the same complex features as standard hospital rooms. But while traditional construction of an intensive care unit might take 12 to 24 months, this can be put in place in just a few weeks. “This goes together like a series of Legos or an erector set,” says Kurt Spiering, principal and healthcare market sector leader at HGA, the architecture firm behind the design. “That was really the challenge: How would you create something that’s repeatable and modular, but something that has infinite variations, so it could be adapted and assembled in any different arrangement?”
In the hospital near Atlanta, called Northside Hospital Gwinnett, 71 isolation rooms are being put in place outside. “They had a big, open parking lot they can land these things in,” Weisman says. “And I would say that we have maximized, to the foot, that site of getting as many beds as possible on it.” The hospital, in an area where the population is quickly growing, needed to add capacity even without COVID-19. As coronavirus cases surged in the area in the summer, the team reached out to the architects, who worked on customizing a design. Fabrication took about a month, and modules began to be installed in September. The whole new “wing” of the hospital will be complete in December. (Hospital management did not respond to a request for an interview in time for this article.)
As cases surge elsewhere now, other hospitals could move quickly to install similar systems if needed. “Within three weeks, we can have them on the road,” says Spiering. “They take a week or so to get to the site. It takes another six weeks or so to actually install them when they show up to the site and get utilities there and become operational. In 8 to 10 weeks, we could have a 16-bed unit fully operational and ready to go.”