In March 2020, the Temporary Hospital of the Community of Madrid, also called IFEMA Hospital, was launched in record time. As you all already know, the function of this facility was to alleviate the situation of hospital saturation caused by COVID-19, turning into a field hospital one of the largest vacant facilities in the capital.
Following the model of the IFEMA Hospital, in June 2020 the Government of the Community of Madrid announces the construction of the Emergency Hospital Enfermera Isabel Zendal. 80,000 m2 distributed in three pavilions, with more than 1,000 hospital beds, modularly organized around nursing controls and 48 beds for ICU and critical care.
The construction of this hospital was carried out in a very short period of time, for which the project was entrusted to several of Spain’s leading construction companies. The challenge was enormous: to design, build and install all the medical equipment in the shortest possible time. To get an idea of the magnitude of the challenge, a hospital of this size can take at least 48 months from design to execution and delivery. The Nurse Isabel Zendal Emergency Hospital was completed in less than 6 months.
To achieve this milestone, coordination and overlapping of activities has been essential.
From the moment we were awarded the contract for the installation of the conventional X-ray room of the hospital, we quickly provided the installation specifications of our equipment to the construction company involved, maintaining constant follow-up and communication. For us it was also a challenge to install the equipment in a different environment from the usual, the reduction of deadlines meant that we had to install in the middle of the construction site. The concurrence of activities was calculated to the millimeter, so much so that the floor where we had to install the equipment was finished minutes before the arrival of our field technicians with the equipment to be installed.
The hospital was inaugurated on December 1, 2020 by the president of the Community of Madrid. She assured that the opening of the center was the “representation of effort, perseverance and the fight of a region against the virus” During the month of December, the hospital began to receive its first patients referred from other hospital centers to meet the objective of reducing the pressure on the public health system. The first transfers were made following a special protocol, as the Emergency Hospital was not yet fully operational. Patients had to be over 18 years of age, request the transfer voluntarily and had to be able to go to the toilet or wash themselves.