Health care providers address changes over last month

PALMER — At a press conference held by the Mat-Su Borough on Wednesday, hospital officials and independent health care providers stood alongside Mat-Su Borough EMS Chief Tracey Loscar to discuss the changes in the way that illness is treated in the Mat-Su Valley as the coronavirus pandemic spreads around the world and around Alaska.

As of Wednesday, the Mat-Su has five positive cases of COVID 19 with four in Palmer and one in Wasilla. Wasilla located their first positive on April 1 and Palmer’s most recent case was listed on April 8. Alaska now has a total of 226 people who have tested positive for COVID 19.

The arrival of Abbot rapid testing machines in Alaska was announced on Monday by Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink. Founder of Capstone Clinic Wade Erickson said that Capstone had been equipped with rapid testing machines prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus, but that as the least affected region in the least affected state, the Abbott machines were likely still a few weeks out. Loscar noted that MSB EMS usually receives around 830 calls in a given month, but over the last four week period in which the coronavirus has spread throughout south central, southeast, interior, and now southwest Alaska, responders with EMS only had 780 calls in that one month span.

“Taking all of those early steps have given us the gift of time that other states do not have,” said Loscar. “Unfortunately in a pandemic like this because our social distancing is working and we do believe that it is, you don’t see this huge surge that’s being reported everywhere in the Lower 48. That’s good but it also makes people complacent.”

Loscar noted Alaska’s rank high among other states in resources put toward prevention and containment. Loscar said that personnel with EMS began training several weeks ago using the playbook designed for ebola and modifying procedures. Ambulances have been reconfigured to reduce contamination and one ambulance has been outfitted with a protective negative pressure barrier to transport COVID 19 positive patients. These changes have resulted in slightly longer response times due to the requirement of putting on Personal Protective Equipment and slightly longer turnaround times after dropping patients off at the hospital due to the need for a clean ambulance. Loscar said that six of her employees have been tested for COVID 19 and all of the tests have come back negative. Loscar emphatically stated that the MSB EMS have a full complement of staff and adequate supplies of PPE, for now.

“We’re kind of trying to flatten the COVID 19 exposure,” said Mayor Vern Halter.

Erickson noted that Capstone had a respiratory illness evaluation treatment center stood up outside the walls of Capstone in Wasilla within one week of the arrival of the virus in Alaska. Capstone’s model works differently than many screening centers around the country. Erickson said that approximately 900 people have called their telemedicine line to ask about testing options, another 300 have driven to Capstone and parked in their cars while their vital signs were taken and they were able to video chat with a physician, but Erickson estimates that only 200 people out of those 900 calls have then been tested for coronavirus.

“At this point in time we simply don’t have enough test kits to meet that demand. If we opened it up at this point we would run out of test kits in approximately two days and we’re doing the most testing and have the most kits of anybody around in the Mat-Su, so my concern is that we need to ensure that we have adequate test kit supply before we liberalize our testing,” said Erickson.

Zink announced at her press conference with Gov. Mike Dunleavy later Wednesday evening that more liberal testing guidelines would be applied with a pending Health Action Alert. Erickson has heard the complaints from Valley residents that not enough testing is available, and disagrees.

“It’s important that we utilize the testing at it’s most effective conditions in order to get the best results. I think there’s been a lot made of the amount of testing that’s happening in the Mat-Su right now and the fact that we don’t have many cases in the Mat-Su and blaming it on the fact that we are not doing much testing when I actually don’t believe that that’s truly the issue. We know that COVID creates about 15 percent hospital admission rate for the number of patients that are tested and currently, the hospital does not have any positive cases and has not had any positive cases to date,” said Erickson. “Therefore we know that there’s not a high disease burden in our borough, thank god for that. So we are going to try to continue testing more. We are going to hopefully continue to push this surge off longer and longer it won’t be too many weeks before we have point of care testing here in our area and if that’s the case that will change everything.”

Erickson said that the portable unit was put in place to allow physicians at Capstone to take care of ill patients without jeopardizing the ability to give patients a place for urgent needs and adequately protect staff and providers. Capstone has added 14 positions to assist with the additional workload and Erickson estimates that Capstone has eased the burden of patients at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center by 300 patients. MSRMC CEO David Wallacealso reported less volume of patients in the Emergency room, with the daily volume typically between 80 and 90 patients down to the low 50’s last week.

“I work with a great team of heroes. The frontline people form the environmental service workers to the nurses, doctors, lab techs, x-ray technicians, surgical staff and of course our physicians and other providers, everybody working together to stay safe so that they can provide care for the people we serve and the preparation for the impending crunch the impending surge has been our main focus,” said Wallace.

Wallace said that MSRMC has partnered with Maple Springs in Palmer to plan for the potential need for an alternate care facility.

“I’d like to thank the community for tremendous outpouring of donations. We have had hundreds, over 700 masks that have been donated so far, we’ve had gowns donated lots of other PPE that has been donated, we’ve had food, I don’t think our staff has ever eaten so well,” said Wallace. “We’ve had signs that have shown up so the outpouring of love for our hospital family and our medical community has been just tremendous.”