Piedmont Columbus is center of hospital system’s COVID-19 response. Take an inside look.

The COVID-19 Incident Command Center at Piedmont Columbus Regional-Midtown was quiet Wednesday morning, with four team members working silently at their computers.

But that’s how its supposed to be, according to Scott Hill, CEO of Piedmont Columbus Regional.

“It shouldn’t be exciting, it’s meant to be calm,” he said during a media-only tour of the command center. “The work being done here enables and supports the work being done on the floors, and their work is the essential front line work.”

The center was launched March 10 to centralize Piedmont Healthcare’s response, operations and planning for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anywhere from six to 12 employees work in the 24-hour command center at a time, mostly in a room with walls covered in television screens, charts and key contact numbers. While the center includes team members from all departments, including infection prevention, supply chain, human resources, communications and others, clinical staff also work to answer phones and emails from any of Piedmont’s 11 hospitals and 800 locations across the state.

The center is a place for any of those entities to bring up concerns and issues that need addressing, Hill said. All issues are logged and brought to resolution.

The command center utilizes what is called a HICS structure, which stands for Hospital Incident Command System. It is utilized in healthcare entities across the United States, including the military.

“In that structure there is a number of functions, and inside of that function there is a leader, and every leader has a job sheet that they follow, and every leader has a team, and inside of their team there are job sheets that define what each team does,” Hill explained.

A chart inside Piedmont Healthcare’s system-wide command center covers an entire wall, with each hospital function listed, from bed management to human resources. Part of the HICS structure, the information written on the wall in erasable marker outlines what is known about that hospital function on that day. The information makes its way into the computer system, Hill said, and debriefing meetings each evening cover how many calls were received that day, the number of questions answered and the number of issues still open.

Television screens are tuned to CNN, the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website, a Johns Hopkins coronavirus mapping tool, and teleconferences with the 11 command centers in Piedmont hospitals, from the northernmost hospital in Jasper to the easternmost in Athens.

Outside of the hospitals, Piedmont Healthcare operates urgent care centers, primary care clinics, specialty clinics and even retail care inside of Walgreens.

“There’s a lot that goes on in our organization with our 22,000 employees every day, and this enables us to hopefully work with them in a way that assists their work, supports the work that they’re trying to do for our community,” Hill said about the command center.

Piedmont’s system-wide command center is not the only one operating at the midtown location.

“We also have the Region I Coordination Command center for the (Georgia Hospital Association) Region I incident command, and we also over in the administrative suite of the hospital have the Piedmont Columbus Regional incident command,” Hill said. “And both Piedmont Columbus and Piedmont Athens serve as regional coordinating hospitals within the state. There’s a lot going on inside.”

Outside of caring for the patients the hospital has now, the second largest priority day-to-day is planning for the future, Hill said, as the community sees a continued steady uptick in positive COVID-19 cases.

“We feel prepared but we’re working to make sure we’re prepared for even more, I think to plan otherwise is naive and probably irresponsible,” Hill said. “That’s what we’re focused on right now: we’re certainly able to meet the need as it exists today but we’re planning around the need that could exist in the future based on what our models are telling us.”

Piedmont Columbus Regional activated a similar command center for the March 2019 tornadoes and for a hurricane the year before that.

“Whenever there is a national weather emergency or emergency state that could potentially effect the region, we try to stand it up just to make sure that we’re ready and planning ahead,” Hill said. “This is a much different event. This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. This is something that is here now, was here two weeks ago, and will build over time.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 3:21 PM.