While most WVU home football games bring a surge of visitors to Morgantown, when WVU’s favorite foe – the Pitt Panthers – come to town, the potential for people to have too much of a good time surges as well.
During every home football game, medical personnel are set up at first aid stations in each concourse of Milan Puskar stadium to address any minor injuries experienced by fans at the game.
Prior to the Pitt game, in a collaborative effort between Mon EMS, WVU Medicine, Mon Health Systems and the Monongalia County Health Department, a small medical center was set up at the indoor practice facility outside of Milan Puskar Stadium to help with minor emergencies and alcohol-related medical issues. The center opened at 4 p.m. and ran throughout the game.
“We anticipated a large volume of patients for this game, as we do for these sort of marquee games,” said Forest Weyen, Mon EMS executive director. “The first aid rooms at the stadium are adequate for the day to day, but sometimes these big extreme games expand our resources.”
Dr. Christopher Goode, chair of WVU Emergency Medicine said patient numbers at the emergency department in J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital usually balance out during home football games because there are fewer walk-in patients due to the increased traffic in the area and the hospital parking lot being used for football parking.
However, Dr. Goode said with beautiful weather throughout the day, the game being held in the evening, and the fact WVU played Pitt, they anticipated people may over-indulge and recognized the potential for a lot of people needing medical attention.
“During any football game you’re going to have a varied assortment of injuries and illnesses. Some require immediate care and need to be transported to the hospital, but there are other cases where it’s maybe a less acute injury or illness where they still need some type of care, but you don’t want to necessarily transport them to the hospital because it’s something that can be handled on scene,” Joe Klass, MCHD threat preparedness specialist, said.
With that in mind, more than a dozen beds were set up in the practice facility and manned by physicians and nurses from both hospitals as well as EMS personnel. MCHD assisted with logistical support and helped organize patient movement.
“In order to keep patients that don’t need to be taking up valuable emergency department beds at either hospital this allows us to pull those patients out of the stadium into a secure place where they will be overseen by physicians, nurses, and EMS personnel and be treated,” Weyen explained.
If a patient’s care needed to be taken care of by the emergency department, they were taken there. But for the patients that just needed to be monitored, evaluated, or reassessed, this resource helped keep those critical emergency department beds open for more critical patients.
Klass added, “This is in the wheelhouse of public health – setting up mass care type of operations … with such a large game and such a large crowd, if there was an incident where we had a large number of patients this could also serve as an additional treatment area for patients with all sorts of injuries.”
Weyen said he believes this was a really great collaboration and a community-focused initiative that benefits the overall health system and the availability of resources for everyone.
MCHD Physician Director Dr. Lee B. Smith, said “Monongalia County Health Department is thrilled to be able to offer support to Mon EMS.”
In addition to the center, Mon EMS brought in resources from Randolph County, Kanawha County and Wetzel County to help with the influx of people in the county.
“We have a really great EMS system, but when you get an extra 70,000 people in Mon County we definitely have to be creative to make sure that services are still provided,” Weyen said.
Goode reminds community members that regardless of a football game, you still have access to both emergency rooms and medical personnel are there to provide a service.
The success of the center will be evaluated and could be something seen more often during big football games and events.
