NEW YORK — Public hospitals in New York City are so concerned about Ebola, they’ve secretly been sending actors with mock symptoms into emergency rooms to test how well the triage staffs identify and isolate possible cases.
A small Ohio hospital has hung up signs imploring patients to let nurses know immediately if they have traveled recently to West Africa.
And across the United States, one of the largest ambulance companies has put together step-by-step instructions for wrapping the interior of a rig with plastic sheeting.
There hasn’t been a single confirmed case of an Ebola infection happening on US soil; the case confirmed in Dallas involves a man who, like several health care workers treated in the United States, contracted the virus in Liberia. But health care providers are worried enough to take a wide variety of precautions.
It isn’t yet clear whether these preparations are unnecessary, or not nearly enough.
But health care specialists say that at the very least, the scare is providing a chance to reinforce and test procedures.
‘‘The attention has been, in a sad way, very helpful,’’ said Dr. Richard Wenzel, an epidemiologist at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
Even small hospitals far from international travel hubs should be reviewing protocols and screening questions, and potentially buying protective equipment such as face masks and protective suits, he said. This will help them avoid repeating the mistakes of Dallas, where a Liberian man with Ebola symptoms was sent away despite telling a hospital staffer he had traveled from Africa, and potentially infected many others before he was readmitted two days later.
A growing number of false alarms are already giving hospitals around the country ample opportunities to test infection control procedures.
In New York, 24 patients screened for Ebola have been put into isolation over the past eight weeks in city-owned hospitals, according to Dr. Ross Wilson, the chief medical officer at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. None had the disease (some had malaria and one had typhoid), but Wilson said isolating potential cases as quickly as possible is essential to keep the virus from spreading.
‘‘We’re taking this very seriously,’’ he said.
Emergency room staffers have been confronted with actors to test their triage measures, and some have been retrained on how to properly put on and remove protective gear, Wilson said. At the city’s flagship Bellevue Hospital Center, technicians are assembling a lab to handle Ebola blood tests, and beds are ready and waiting in an isolation ward for any confirmed cases.
New York City’s 911 operators have been told to ask people who describe Ebola-like symptoms and ask for ambulances whether they’ve been to West Africa recently. That question is also becoming the norm at AMR, which operates private ambulances in 40 states.
‘‘We don’t want to respond with a presumption that everyone in the field has Ebola,’’ said Dr. Ed Racht, AMR’s chief medical officer. ‘‘The idea is, if the travel question is positive with the symptoms, it gives us a yellow flag. . . . It doesn’t mean immediately putting on the space suits.’’