The historic El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, is offering homeless respiratory patients a place to self-isolate while being tested for the coronavirus.
The program is under the auspices of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services, Gallup Indian Medical Center and the Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment nonprofit organization.
Those patients will be housed in a separate building across the parking lot of the main hotel, according to the Gallup Independent print edition.
While El Rancho is open for business, no one will be in contact with the patients.
The separate building has enough space for up to 20 homeless individuals. The individuals are those who have either tested for the virus and are waiting for results or for those who have symptoms that need daily monitoring, but are not sick enough to be hospitalized. It starts with a medical referral.
When an RMCH or GIMC provider refers a patient, the provider calls the hotel and registration is handled over the phone. Transportation is provided. El Rancho’s security opens the door when the patient arrives. The patients are not given room keys. El Rancho has hired extra security to watch the rooms at all times. The patient must be independent with daily living activities and not be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, nor likely to withdraw from alcohol or other substances.
Nurses or providers will check on the patient by phone on a daily basis to assess their symptoms as test results are pending. El Rancho provides meals, leaving them outside the doors of each room.
The patient is released when he or she is found to have no symptoms of the virus. The room then is cleaned under strict guidelines by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A news release stated the arrangement is “a workable solution for now” to slow the spread of the disease and ensure those homeless patients get medical care.
McKinley County, where Gallup is situated, has a poverty rate of nearly 38% — about three times the national average — and more than 180 homeless people, according to data from state and federal agencies.
R.E. “Griff” Griffith, brother of the famed movie director D.W. Griffith, opened El Rancho in 1937. The Griffiths encouraged filmmakers to shoot movies in the Gallup area, and the hotel benefited by having a bevy of stars — including John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Errol Flynn, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart — stay at the hotel during productions up to the 1960s.
The hotel started to decline, especially when Interstate 40 bypassed Route 66 in 1980. But Armand Ortega Sr., who always dreamed of owning El Rancho, bought it in 1986 after it went into bankruptcy and threatened with demolition.
According to an Associated Press story in 1989, Ortega bought the property for $500,000 and spent another $500,000 restoring it. It was reopened in May 1988 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places that year. Ortega died in 2014 at age 86.
(Image of the main building at El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, by Richie Diesterheft via Flickr)