Dr. Meghan Maslanka Leads Section at COVID-19 Convention Center Medical Monitoring Station
Leslie Capo, Director of Information Services
Dr. Meghan Maslanka, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Section of Emergency
Medicine, has been appointed medical manager/operations section leader at the Ernest
N. Morial Convention Center Medical Monitoring Station, which opened to COVID-19 patients
on April 6, 2020. After completing the emergency medicine residency program, she was
accepted into a disaster medicine fellowship at Harvard/Beth Israel Deaconess before
coming home to join the LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine faculty.
Dr. Maslanka worked with her fellow LSU SOM Emergency Medicine faculty colleagues
Dr. Joseph Kanter, Assistant State Health Officer and Region 1 Medical Director at
the Louisiana Department of Health, and Dr. Jennifer Avegno, Director of the New Orleans
Health Department, to set up the step-down unit.
The monitoring station was developed to ease the burden on acute care hospitals. It
provides a quarantined environment for COVID-19 positive patients to receive basic
medical services including administering limited amounts of oxygen, blood glucose
monitoring for diabetic patients, bedside care, IV fluid intervention if needed and
taking vital signs among others. Patients must be transferred from a Region 1 Tier
1 or Tier 2 hospital; walk-up patients will not be accepted. Patient admission/transfers
from hospitals are now being accepted 24/7.