Officials at Mercy Health System are establishing a SWAT-style team of health professionals to respond if a person with Ebola symptoms seeks help at one of its hospitals or physician offices.

Mercy, along with the other two major hospital systems in the Toledo area, the University of Toledo Medical Center and ProMedica, are preparing for a potential Ebola outbreak with a new urgency since a Texas nurse contracted the disease while caring for a dying Liberian patient, said Dr. Kris Brickman, medical director of emergency services at UTMC, the former Medical College of Ohio.

“At the end of the day, what scares everybody about what happened in Dallas, and nobody can figure out what happened there, but I’m gonna guess at some point she contaminated herself because she didn’t remove [protective clothing] properly,” Dr. Brickman said.

PHOTO GALLERY: Ebola suit-up

He said UTMC is holding training sessions with the emergency-room and critical-care staff to ensure they know how to properly put on the protective gear, and, most importantly, that they know how to take it off without getting infected.

“We are making them actually do it, and we are checking it off when they do it,” Dr. Brickman said. UTMC is producing a video today to educate staff on the proper way to put on the gear. Poster boards with step-by-step instructions also will be placed around the hospital, he said.

Dr. Brickman said initially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told hospitals around the country that any Ebola cases would be sent to one of the four specially designed hospitals with biocontainment units: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; St. Patrick’s Hospital in Montana; the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, or the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

He said Toledo hospitals were thinking they would just have to isolate any potential Ebola patients and treat them until they could be transferred. “Then Dallas happened and the CDC backed off and said, ‘You need to be prepared to take care of that patient through the entire illness.’ So it’s important that we protect ourselves,” Dr. Brickman said.

UTMC is prepared to seal off a portion of the hospital if one to four patients are being treated for Ebola. Dr. Brickman said the medical center would go so far as to close off a large portion of the campus if it is treating more than four patients at one time.

Officials at Mercy and ProMedica said they do not have plans to isolate any portion of hospitals that could be treating any future Ebola patients.

Dr. Brickman said the situation in Texas has heightened the level of anxiety in the health-care community.

“People were commenting that it is similar to what it was like with AIDS. It is something we haven’t experienced since then,” said Brad Bertke, president and CEO of Mercy St. Anne Hospital.

He said Mercy made the decision Monday to develop the specialized task force, or SWAT-style team, of staff from infection control and hazardous control, doctors, nurses, and possibly others. The idea surfaced during a special training held at the hospital, with more than 60 of its top leaders, to discuss how the Ebola situation is evolving in the United States and to get training and updates from the CDC.

The details on size of the special team and how it would operate are still being worked out, said Charla Ulrich, director of quality and infection prevention at Mercy.

“We want to have a common approach to the way we handle a situation like this. Like a SWAT team, they could go to any location and address the problem,” she said.

UTMC and ProMedica are considering the idea of using specially trained teams to handle Ebola cases, but Brian Biggy, system disaster coordinator for ProMedica, questioned whether it would work if multiple cases developed at once.

“Let’s say you have a [top] team — if you have one patient that will work fine, but if your volume increases it could quickly overwhelm that team. This is a dynamic situation,” Mr. Biggy said.

Mr. Biggy said all hospital staff members have to go through training every year on how to put on and take off protective gear, but ProMedica staff members have been undergoing extra training within their individual departments. Mr. Biggy did not know, however, how many staff members received the additional training.

He said that after the nurse contracted Ebola in Texas, the CDC changed its guidelines and is now recommending hospitals use what’s called the “buddy” system for putting on protective clothing. This is where two health-care workers assist each other in getting into and out of the protective clothing.

Mercy officials said they are going beyond the CDC guidelines for protective gear for health-care workers and said they are ordering liquid-resistant hoods similar to those worn by doctors and nurses treating Ebola patients in West Africa.

“In this particular case we know there is a fear factor. We are trying to help the staff feel more comfortable, and it’s easier to get [the gear] on and off,” Ms. Ulrich said.

The protective gear can take 15 minutes to put on and 15 minutes or more to take off, she said.

“What’s unusual about this is that we are taking care of people with an incredibly contagious and lethal disease, but it’s also a biohazard like a radiation exposure. It requires us to be much more meticulous than we have in the past to keep our health-care workers safe, and that’s why it’s different than AIDS or H1N1,” Dr. Brickman said.

All the area hospital officials said they have abundant supplies of the protective wear for their staff and don’t anticipate having any problem getting the additional supplies from vendors if needed.

Ohio Department of Health and other state officials relayed much of the same information during a conference call with media across the state on Tuesday. Carol Cunningham, state medical director for the Ohio Department of Public Safety Division of Emergency Medical Services, called the supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, “fairly well-stocked.”

She said health-care workers “use PPE every single day, not just for Ebola,” Dr. Cunningham said. “If we were to run out, they’re readily available.” She said Ohio hospitals have programs in place for staff coordination of supplies so equipment goes where the need is.

The more likely cause of fever for Ohioans this fall is influenza, which can cause an influx of people showing up at clinics and emergency rooms with what they believe are Ebola symptoms.

“Many Ebola symptoms may mimic other diseases such as flu,” said Dr. Mary DiOrio, state epidemiologist and interim chief of the Division of Prevention and Health Promotion for ODH. “The key question is if they’ve traveled to West Africa.”

Contact Marlene Harris-Taylor at mtaylor@theblade.com or 419-724-6091.

First Published October 15, 2014, 4:00 a.m.