Press Releases
02/23/2018
DPH Deploys Mobile Field Hospital to Middlesex Hospital Following Crash
The State Department of Public Health (DPH) today announced that it will deploy portions of the State’s Ottilie W. Lundgren Memorial Field Hospital to Middlesex Hospital for use while Middlesex’s Emergency Department is closed due to today’s incident where a man crashed his car into the entrance of the Emergency Department. The Emergency Department will remain closed while federal and state law enforcement investigate the scene and then the damage is repaired.
“First and foremost we are relieved that no hospital staff or patients were injured in this incident. DPH will be providing Middlesex Hospital with three sections of the State’s mobile field hospital to serve as a temporary Emergency Department until they are back up and operational. We anticipate that the field hospital will be operational by the morning,” said DPH Commissioner Dr. Raul Pino. “We are very fortunate as a state to have this invaluable asset at the ready to ensure continued care and treatment for Connecticut residents when catastrophes, accidents or other events occur that inhibit our hospitals’ abilities to provide health care services.”
DPH will deploy three units of the hospital to serve as a temporary Emergency Department with more than 40 beds for Middlesex Hospital. Personnel from the Department of Corrections who serve on the Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) will assist DPH personnel with standing up the hospital, which comes fully equipped with its own HVAC and power. The field hospital will be staffed by Middlesex Hospital personnel.
The mobile field hospital is a state-of-the-art 100-bed mobile field hospital designed to support the state’s health care system in response to an emergency. The hospital is deployable as a flexible configuration of five multiple bed units that operate jointly or independently to provide triage and treatment anywhere in the state and can also support an acute care hospital after a catastrophic structural or mechanical failure. It was named in 2006 in honor of Ottilie Lundgren, a Connecticut woman who died from inhalation anthrax in 2001.