CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs has set up temporary additional ER space outside its Emergency Department in order to be prepared as COVID-19 cases in the community rise.
Hospital President Dr. Douglas Ross said in an interview last week that being prepared has been the key for the health care system.
"The challenge in the Emergency Department is that, unlike your doctor's office, where patients come in in a scheduled manner ... patients can all show up at the very same time," he said.
Ross said the new facility will let them more rapidly assess patients and get them to the proper part of the Emergency Department if they have an influx of patients.
Patients could be treated in the temporary facility if needed, though Ross said it's really designed for an initial assessment and to "direct traffic."
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"In our Emergency Department, we keep patients with COVID-related illness separate from non-COVID patients, because we want to keep those non-COVID patients safe," he said.
In a Dec. 30 email to The Sentinel-Record, CHI St. Vincent Director of Marketing and Communications Bonnie Ward said CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs has "admitted a higher than usual number of patients with COVID-19 over the past few days."
"In some cases, patients have been held in the emergency department while waiting for a bed placement and CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs staff remain diligent about identifying and immediately isolating any patient suspected of having COVID-19," she said.
Joshua Cook, who does media relations for the hospital, said in an email those comments "align in timing" with when the hospital was considering the temporary facility, which he said began setting up on Jan. 4.
In a Jan. 4 email sent to the paper, Ward said the facility was being set up to "continue providing expedient, quality care and serve the increased number of patients visiting the CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs emergency department at this time."
She said, "The additional space will expand the hospital's capacity to provide faster treatment for non-COVID patients and get them home in a timely manner."
Cook also wanted to note that COVID-19 patients who arrive at the Emergency Department are still immediately quarantined pending a room assignment, and Ross said he doesn't want anyone staying home for fear of catching COVID-19.
"Just because the COVID pandemic is here, it does not have people stopping having heart attacks or stopping breaking bones or stopping having strokes and if any of those patients are having any of those symptoms or illnesses, we want those folks to feel safe to rapidly come into our health care system," he said.
According to Ross, they have not had to bring any more manpower in to operate the area; they are able to do it with their existing staff. He said he doesn't think they're going to need the facility the majority of the time, and they're able to "turn it on and turn it off" as needed. Cook confirmed in an email on Thursday they have not yet needed to activate the expanded ER space.
In a news release from the Hot Springs/Garland County COVID-19 Task Force released Tuesday, Ross said they have seen a "significant surge from a hospitalization standpoint," and the ICU has been full for a month. However, in the interview, he said they planned ahead and identified different areas of the hospital where they could care for critical care patients. He said they have had to use some of those areas, but those patients receive the same level of care as those in the ICU.
Ross said in the release there have been a couple of days in recent weeks in which as many as 15-20 COVID-19 patients were admitted to the hospital in one night. He also said some staff members were sick, which made staffing the available beds a challenge, but the "team has done a great job of making sure patients are flowing through the system well and getting out the back door so we can keep the front door open."
Ross told the newspaper that, although some may be tired of wearing masks and social distancing, those measures are there for a reason, and it's vital to continue practicing them.
"If the numbers continue to rise, it's going to produce that much more strain on the system, so every little bit that people can do at home to keep themselves safe, downstream, helps the health care institution," he said.