Press Releases

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (Jan. 20, 2009)

Specialty Hospital of Washington-Capitol Hill To Host Disaster Medical Assistance Team During Presidential Inaugural.

LTACH Facility at 700 Constitution Avenue NE Selected For Prime Location and High-Level Infrastructure.

Washington, D.C. – With record crowds poised to descend on Washington, D.C. for President Obama's Inauguration, the optimal phase among first responders and public safety personnel is most certainly "just in case."

Well, "just in case" of a catastrophic scenario, the Specialty Hospital of Washington-Capitol Hill will be ready for any emergencies that could potentially arise. Through cooperative efforts with the Office of Preparedness and Emergency Operations (OPEO) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), SHW-Capitol Hill will play host to a National Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) which will operate from the downtown Washington facility from Sunday, January 18 through Wednesday, January 21.

"We normally function as an LTACH facility, a long-term acute care hospital that traditionally provides care over the course of several months to medically complex and catastrophically ill patients," said SHW's Regional Vice President and CEO Susan Bailey. "Although the basic operations of the hospital will not change, for four days this week DMAT will be in our facility ready to treat patients if and when the ER's are at capacity." According to Bailey, the DMAT will consist of 35 volunteers comprised of emergency room physicians, internal medicine specialists and family practitioners. "These are all civilian health care providers who have their own regular jobs but are donating their time to this event," Bailey said. "We hope their services aren't required."

According to Bailey, the DMAT team will activate only at the direction of the District's Emergency Preparedness Command Center and only under surge conditions through which established patient and treatment "thresholds" have been breached at traditional hospitals. "Should their services be required, the DMAT team operating out of SHW-Capitol Hill will be able to handle between 250 and 400 patients per day," Bailey said. "Our role will largely be to decompress the other emergency rooms throughout the city should such services be required."

For additional information visit www.specialtyhospitalofwashington.com.

About SHW – Capitol Hill and Hadley SHW-Capitol Hill, located at 700 Constitution Avenue in Northeast Washington, DC and SHW-Hadley, located at 4601 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southwest Washington, DC are both Long Term Acute Care (LTAC) Hospitals. They are the only two licensed LTACH facilities in the entire metropolitan area. Both institutions offer 24-hour in-house medical, nursing and respiratory therapy coverage and newly-renovated GI and surgical suites. The hospitals' core missions are to provide a comprehensive, high quality alternative to long-term stays in the intensive care or critical care units of short-term acute care and traditional full-service hospitals.