Med Center Health officials and emergency room staff explore the facility’s inflatable hospital set up behind the emergency room during a worker training and press event on Wednesday morning, Aug. 21, 2024, for newer ER and EMS staff to learn about its capabilities. The inflatable hospital tent, which can be deployed anywhere in the regional area in emergency cases and was previously used to treat patients injured in the 2021 tornadoes in the parking lot of Moss Middle School, has room to treat up to a dozen patients and can be used for a variety of emergency events and disasters, including for triage, as an incident command center, for hospital overcapacity, for stabilization and many more needs. (Grace Ramey McDowell/grace.ramey@bgdailynews.com)

Around three years ago, a group of medical workers assisted patients inside a big blue sectioned tent dispatched to a local middle school following a deadly tornado outbreak.

Med Center Health dispatched that same tent, which it calls an inflatable hospital, Wednesday afternoon in a worker training and press event. Two of the center’s managers spoke about the inflatable hospital’s role in the community.

A local tool that can meet a variety of needs, the inflatable hospital is intended for emergency events and disasters, where there are likely more patients than the emergency room can handle, said James Monroe, the center’s manager of security and emergency management.

Capable of serving up to 12 patients at once, the inflatable hospital is “more so” used for stabilization, according to the center’s emergency department manager Seth Wilson. It’s also used for providing triage, basic care and other services, Monroe said.

“Having this ability to expand and surge for patient care gives us one more tool to provide care and let people recover,” Monroe said.

It’s not to be used for a full procedure or as a trauma room, said Wilson and Monroe, respectively.

In the event the emergency room is past capacity, the hospital would implement a “code external disaster” and launch an incident command center, where an incident commander decides whether to deploy the inflatable hospital, Wilson said.

During the 2021 tornado outbreak, the tent provided a space where less acute injuries could be offloaded, freeing up the hospital’s capacity to serve the influx of patients who needed more acute care, Wilson said.

A challenge of working in the inflatable hospital is when there are undesirable environmental elements such as extreme heat or cold, according to Wilson. However, he noted, those elements wouldn’t factor into a decision about whether to deploy the tent.

The inflatable hospital is made of rubber, making it quick to hose down; it’s professionally decontaminated after usage, Wilson said.