Medicalized Hotel as an Alternative to Hospital Care for Management of Noncritical COVID-19

Abstract

Background: Since the first wave of COVID-19, alternatives to conventional hospitalization have been proposed for the provision of different levels of care, ranging from shelter during quarantine to hospital-level medical care. Objective: To describe the adaptation of a hotel by a hospital-at-home team to provide hospital-level care to patients with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in Barcelona, Spain. Methods: Hospital Clínic de Barcelona (HCB) is a 750-bed, public, tertiary teaching hospital serving 560 000 persons in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, Spain. In March 2020, the hospital-at-home unit was instructed to medicalize a hotel ('health hotel' [HH]) in downtown Barcelona. The aim of this initiative was to help decongest hospitals in the area by admitting patients with low dependency (Barthel Index score >60) and mild to severe COVID-19 from emergency departments or COVID-19 hospital wards, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clinical guidelines