With crews behind him setting up walls to define a 600-bed COVID-19 alternate care facility at the Convention Center, Dr. James Cardon relayed that the “happiest day” of the spring was watching the first version of the hospital be dismantled.

“The happiest day was when we didn’t have to use it,” said Dr. Cardon, chief clinical integration officer with Hartford HealthCare (HHC), which partnered with the state and the Connecticut National Guard to create the facility that will be used for COVID-19 patients who are stable but are not ready to be sent home. “We have no desire to care for people in this facility if we can avoid it.”

About 70 members of the Army and Air National Guard started carving the alternative care facility out of the massive Convention Center Friday morning at 9. Staff Sgt. Stephen Tucker said all 600 beds, fringed with curtain draping for privacy, would be done by Saturday.

At that point, HHC teams will bring in medical equipment and start working on connecting the facility to the system’s electronic medical record for seamless patient transitions. The last step will be securing state Department of Health inspections, which Dr. Cardon anticipated should be finalized in about two weeks.

The work, both he and Tucker agreed, was going more smoothly this time because of “lessons learned” in the spring (see photo above from April).

“It’s been an easier lift to get things started,” Dr. Cardon said.

Calling the facility “an insurance policy” in case recent hikes in Connecticut’s COVID-19 positivity rates translate into more hospital admissions, he said it is prudent to be prepared in case area hospitals are overwhelmed at any point.

“We wanted to do this before it was needed. We still have the holiday to get through,” he said, adding that HHC is also making “as much capacity in the acute hospitals” that will absorb added patients before the system has to resort to using the alternate care facility.

While the system is “extending our capacity to care for patients with COVID-19,” Dr. Cardon continued to urge residents to help avoid the need for such facilities by adhering to mask-wearing, hand-washing and physical distancing policies.

“The need for this,” he said in the cavernous Convention Center, “would be clearly mitigated by (such steps).”

If patients do need to be transferred to the alternate care facility, he said HHC will redeploy staff from hospitals to care for them.