UConn Health opened a drive-thru COVID-19 sampling site on its Farmington campus on Monday, March 23. Patients with appointments are able to drive into the testing area and usually within seven minutes, they are on their way.
This type of efficiency is the result of hours of planning and preparation by the entire staff at UConn Health. Virtually every organization area played a role in the establishment of the testing area.
“As a state institution, part of our mission is to take care of the community and its citizens and we knew we need to have a sampling center,” says Dr. Scott Allen, the interim chief medical officer of UConn John Dempsey Hospital and a professor in medicine. “We had an organizational meeting about a week before we opened. We worked with our facilities and campus planning folks and the first hurdle was where to put this thing. We didn’t know how long the lines would be and how it would impact our other traffic flow.”
The decision was made to set up in Parking Lot 3, which is in a quiet part of the Farmington campus, but that provided other challenges.
“During disasters like this, I really believe it brings out the best in people and this is certainly a case where so many people were willing to do whatever was need to make it work,” says Deb Abromaitis, the director of the Office of Accreditation and Regulatory Affairs, who worked with the Department of Public Health to make sure the testing site was approved. “People came out very early in morning, late at night, working on the weekends, just be able to deliver whatever was needed to make this happen.”
The areas of UConn Health involved in the process seem endless: police, fire, nursing, facilities operations, telecommunications and IT, laboratories, parking services, and food services just to name a few.
Allen says that, as UConn Health has cut back on outpatient services during the crisis, staff from that area has volunteered to get trained and be part of the process, whether that means greeting patients in the first tent or getting samples in the second.
“Every day another area steps up,” says Abromaitis. “It’s been an unbelievable multidisciplinary effort. Parking, people that do signage, and on and on. Earlier this week, the nurses were having problems breaking the sampling swabs to get them into tubes. Our facilities people were right coming up with shears to make that better.”
Abromaitis gave the examples of a nurse who stayed outside after being covered in snow that fell from a tent and of the UConn fire department stepping up.
“We realized we needed more heat for our sample takers because they are not able to wear coats with their protective gear,” says Abromaitis. “We got heaters that had gas tanks, but we need to put barriers up to protect the gas tanks in case a care went into them. The barriers needed to be filled with water and our fire department was there right away to fill the barriers. It has just been one great thing after another from our people.”
She also remembers the feeling when the first test case when through the center and the mobile unit staff were all staring out the window; it was “just a great positive feeling of how we all worked together.”
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The COVID-19 sampling site is located on the Farmington campus of UConn Health at 263 Farmington Avenue. The site is open from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and is by appointment only. To be tested, patients must make an appointment by calling 860-679-1869 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Those who plan on coming to the test site must have an appointment and be aware of the following:
- Must bring a valid order for testing from your practitioner
- Must have a Driver’s License
- Vehicles must be lower than eight feet in height
- The patient being tested must be at a window that rolls completely down
UConn Health also has a COVID-19 Call Center to help the community through this ever-changing situation at 860-679-3199, Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to answer questions about the virus.
