300 testing kits hospital wide for OSF Healthcare is what is available for use in testing patients for the coronavirus. Those testing kits are only being used on patients that have been hospitalized with acute or severe respiratory illness. OSF Chief Medical Officer for the Western Region, Dr. Cliff Martin, states all hands are on deck:
“Our Incident Command Centers at all our facilities and our units are reporting up to Emergency Operations Council, which means you get all hands on deck. We have an ongoing report of exactly of the census of our open beds, ICU beds, ventilators, supplies, everything that we have throughout the whole OSF system. So that any hospital that has that need, can draw on the others for that support and that includes providers and physicians as well,” Dr. Martin says.
OSF Healthcare as well as other area hospitals are relying on the State Lab to run all of the tests to confirm if a patient tests positive for coronavirus.
Amid this coronavirus pandemic, OSF Healthcare has limited their surgeries to those that are urgent and emergent to be performed. Dr. Cliff Martin, has more:
“I would say the vast majority of our surgeries have been postponed. We are only doing the emergent and urgent surgeries and the same thing with other procedures. Again, a test that could easily be done in a couple of weeks without creating any harm for a patient is being delayed and limiting access of patients as well that way,” states Dr. Martin.
Telephone visits and online assistance with the OSF Healthcare chatbot Clare are being used in an effort to limit foot traffic in the hospital. In person examinations are still being scheduled, but only when absolutely necessary.
