On January 20, 2020, the first confirmed case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States was diagnosed in Snohomish County, Washington. Community spread of COVID-19 was recognized on February 28, and since that time the University of Washington (UW) healthcare system has been at the forefront of responding to this outbreak. To “flatten the curve” and reduce the likelihood of local healthcare systems being overwhelmed with patients requiring admission and respiratory support, our community and state have taken progressively restrictive measures. We began with informal measures including minimization of social interactions and working from home if possible, to “social distancing” and to a recent state-wide declaration of a State of Emergency with enforceable requirements to “stay at home”. Our department’s technology group is working with the UW Incident Command Center and the UW Office of Graduate Medical Education to build a software tool to coordinate deployment of additional physicians from a variety of medical specialties in response to the anticipated surge of COVID patients.
If anything, these state-wide restrictions on driving and recreational activities will result in a decrease in the need for urgent orthopaedic care. However, while not on the frontline of this pandemic, we are taking actions that will make a significant impact on our healthcare system. By rescheduling all non-urgent orthopaedic care we will free up critical resources such as personal protective equipment (PPE) for use by our intensivists and internal medicine colleagues. We still need to care for patients with more urgent orthopaedic conditions and we may also be called upon to assist with the care of patients with COVID-19 if our intensivists and internal medicine colleagues become overwhelmed by a large influx of patients. To decrease the risk of exposure to COVID-19, we have reorganized schedules to minimize the number of faculty and residents that are working with patients at any given time. In effect we are preserving some redundancy amongst our orthopaedic providers. We have taken other measures not described here and as the situation remains fluid and a surge of COVID patients is expected over the coming weeks, we will no doubt need to adapt and do our best to overcome this unprecedented challenge to our community and nation.