UCHealth created an intensive training guide for the doctors shifting over. That includes “care pathways” in how to treat the more basic ailments that require hospitalization. But the guide’s main focus is on getting the clinicians up to speed on the complicated hospital setting.

“The medical skills aren’t that different … So the training isn’t specifically, how do you diagnose pneumonia? Because everyone sort of knows that,” said Dr. Tyler Anstett, who has been leading UCHealth’s effort to gear up for a COVID-19 surge.

Anstett explains there may be out-patient anesthesiologists who need to learn the routines of ICU, and primary care doctors getting up to speed on what it takes to admit and discharge someone.

But he emphasized that the call up would not lead to doctors performing procedures they’re not qualified for — a fear that’s been floating around on social media. UCHealth will not ask a dermatologist to do pulmonology or an OB-GYN to intubate someone, Anstett said.

“We’re not going to repurpose people out of their comfort zone,” Anstett said. Instead, if “that gastroenterologist hasn’t done this in a while, all that she would have to do is look at that care pathway — and if you haven’t picked up a stethoscope in awhile, click here and see how,”

Kaiser Permanente is embarking on a similar effort, shifting clinicians into hospitals in preparation for a surge.

Dr. Wendolyn Gozansky said they hope to employ the specialists already in high demand — pulmonologists, anesthesiologists, urgent care and hospital medicine docs — exclusively to care for the sickest COVID-19 patients. Everyone else will be distributed throughout the hospital to care for all the other ailments that will continue to bring people in.

“We want to be sure we have enough providers working in the hospital setting to care for what could be an influx of people,” Gozansky said. “But life continues as well and we’ll still have patients that need attention for a heart attack or a broken bone.”

The massive redeployment of health care workers is already being seen in some of the state’s urgent care facilities.

Many of the more than dozen UCHealth urgent care clinics along the Front Range have grown quiet as the global pandemic spreads through Colorado. That’s likely mostly because people are afraid of going to doctor’s offices and encountering people with COVID-19, said Dr. Chris Davis, the system’s medical director for virtual health.