At Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, 2021 was a year that many won’t soon forget. The 24-hour emergency department of the hospital’s York Street Campus was awash with COVID-19 patients and was struggling to stay apace inside an area that was not designed for the unprecedented surge. With a rising number of virus cases on top of its usual caseload of illnesses and injuries, the ED was having its own emergency and needed a solution, stat.
To manage its higher patient volumes and make more room for those awaiting hospital admission, the ED opted to create a temporary patient care annex to add 35 patient bays and nine nursing stations. Further raising the construction challenges, the new 10,000-square-foot project would be constructed alongside the existing emergency department area and completed on an exceptionally fast timeline of three months. And the challenges didn’t end there.