Riverside County Fairgrounds transformed into fully equipped field medical station
The National Guard arrived in Indio last Wednesday morning to set up one of California's 8 federal medical stations.
Here's a view of one of the treatment areas inside Indio’s field medical station. There are rows of beds available to take non critical patients.
The field hospital fully equipped with the help of the National Guard.
“We have a 10 person team with three nurses, a respiratory therapist, and six medics," said Captain Jim Kane from 144th Medical Detachment for California Air National Guard.
Plus, health care workers from the California medical assistance team also came in for support.
“We have 25 personnel," said Shane Reichardt. "There’s one doctor, one nurse practitioner, five RN’s and the rest are either paramedics, EMT’s and various administrative staff.”
Senior Public Information Specialist for Riverside County’s Emergency Management Department, Shane Reichardt takes News Channel 3 around the newly developed field medical station, which has been divided into two separate buildings for treatment one for those testing positive and another for non-coronavirus patients.
“So here we’ve got a total of 125 beds," said Reichardt. "25 are for the people who are potentially COVID-19 positive.”
Reichardt said the facility is created to help aid Coachella Valley hospitals as they brace for a potential surge in coronavirus cases.
“It's a setup to do treatment but its not to replace hospitals," said Reichardt. "Take lower level patients and give them a place to be and not be impacting the hospital.”
“We will be delivering medical care from nursing care to giving medication to making sure that people are getting up and about and assistance to daily living," said Kane.
Reichardt said testing can be done once a patient is admitted to field medical station and shows symptoms.
“Right now, we don’t have any patients here, we don’t know exactly when we might receive patients but the team is ready," said Reichardt.
Officials said they will start taking patients once Riverside County Public Health and local hospitals make the call for aid.
