CFVH 360

CFVH Staff,

I want to take just a couple minutes of your time to update you on actions we took late Friday afternoon related to our current escalation of Covid-19 activity. Some of you are already aware.

Late Friday we were faced with 15 patients in the hospital with the likelihood of only 1 being discharged over the weekend, a busy ER with multiple Covid patients being evaluated, and the ongoing problem of extreme difficulty finding places to transfer patients. Anticipating that reaching a crises point over the weekend was highly probable we took the following actions:

• I approved the outpatient treatment of an individual that had no payment source except to be treated as an inpatient
• We cancelled todays elective surgery cases
• 3 of our old acute care beds were brought in from storage and placed in the surgery preop bays to be used for overflow admissions
• We created the “covid unit” that we have had planned since the pandemic started. The end of acute care is walled off. This creates a “grey” area that staff can move about between rooms boarding covid patients and somewhat simplifying their care and lessoning staff time demands.
• We are still completing emergent/urgent surgical cases as indicated, and we are still able to perform c-sections

A couple patients made unexpected dramatic improvements and were able to be discharged this weekend freeing those beds for other use. We currently have 12 patients, 9 of which are afflicted with covid.

We were fortunate that the pace set for admissions last week did not carry through the weekend, but I believe the correct decisions were made. We have all the cancelled OR cases rescheduled and will assure that patients are cared for.

I am proud of those involved in making all the changes happen late Friday (nursing, facilities, housekeeping) , and those who worked in the environment this weekend. It is just one more demonstration of our teams commitment to caring for our community.

Gregory S. Hanson, MD