Associated Press November 18, 2014
What does it take to Ebola-proof a hospital? Over the past few months, U.S. medical centers have spent millions of dollars putting together a plan to treat patients with the scary, but extremely rare disease. There is no tried-and-true way to build an Ebola ward, but the administrators cobbling them together have been guided by a few key principals gleaned from clinics in Africa and the few full biocontainment facilities in the U.S. When a Liberian traveler turned up sick with Ebola at a Dallas hospital in September and subsequently infected two nurses, health officials in Texas began a feverish search for facilities that could treat other victims. They ultimately picked two. The first one was a no-brainer: The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which was already home to a national biocontainment training center. The second was the lesser-known Methodist Campus for Continuing Care, a former full-service hospital outside Dallas that had been sitting mostly empty since the staff moved to a new campus last spring. The news also appeared in ABC News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Insurance Journal, CBS Dallas-Wort Worth, NBC10-Rochester, Fox News, The Herald News, Salina Journal and Claims Journal.