National Jewish Health Launches COVID-19 Testing and New Acute Respiratory Care Clinic

National Jewish Health today has developed a COVID-19 diagnostic test and established an Acute Respiratory Clinic for suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients.

The National Jewish Health Advanced Diagnostic Laboratories and the organization’s Center for Genes, Environment & Health collaborated to design, validate and launch a number of platforms in order to provide more sustainable testing. National Jewish Health began testing over the weekend, focused initially on serving hospitalized patients and frontline health care workers. We plan to be able to expand testing to the broader community in the coming days.

In addition, National Jewish Health has created an Acute Respiratory Clinic, located on the main campus, designed to provide an option for patients who are sick with suspected COVID-19 or other acute respiratory illnesses. This clinic will offer alternatives for patients seeking care and will help to decompress emergency facilities. To protect patients seeking care in the Acute Respiratory Clinic, as well as patients requiring care for their other respiratory, cardiac and immunologic conditions, patients in the Acute Respiratory Clinic will enter via a separate entrance and be seen in rooms with negative air pressure to prevent the escape of germs. Patients will be seen by a dedicated team of health professionals, including practitioners trained and equipped to care for those patients.

“As a tertiary referral hospital with a long history of treating severe lung diseases, we feel it is our responsibility and our mission to share our expertise and contribute however we can in fighting this challenging epidemic,” said Michael Salem, MD, president and CEO of National Jewish Health.  “We commend our staff who have worked tirelessly to be able to provide this critically needed testing and treatment for COVID-19 patients.”

As always, National Jewish Health is committed to maintaining the health of our patients and community.  Our physicians and staff will continue to see National Jewish Health pediatric and adult patients with exacerbations of their existing chronic lung, heart and immune diseases not necessarily related to COVID-19, so they can avoid worsening symptoms that might otherwise send them to a hospital or make them more susceptible to COVID-19.
National Jewish Health has also assessed its clinic space and identified areas where inpatient capacity can be increased in preparation for a surge in COVID-19 patients and has worked to offer expanded telehealth options to patients.