Geary County health system in danger of moving to crisis staffing

Jan. 24—Geary County's health system is operating with minimal staff as the state is experiencing a temporary shortage of healthcare workers caused by staff catching COVID-19 and other illnesses.

Friday marked the end of the 15-day Disaster Declaration that Gov. Laura Kelly issued Jan. 6, but Geary Community Hospital and healthcare facilities in the county are still dealing with heavy staff shortages.

"Geary County's health system is currently operating in contingency staffing and in danger of moving to crisis staffing," said Charles Martinez, interim director of Geary County Health Department, on Wednesday.

He said the number of COVID-19 patients has increased exponentially since the holidays, and health system programs had to be shut down. Medical clinics, pharmacies and other facilities that provide non-emergency care are among the long list of facilities struggling during the spike in cases.

"The new Omicron variant is far more transmissible than Delta, but the symptoms experienced are less severe," he said. "However, even with the weakened severity, the number of patients needing care has placed a strain on our resources."

Martinez said acute care is likely suffering the worst, which is a level of health care where a patient is treated for a brief but severe episode of illness. Additionally, care for non-emergency walk-ins is considerably delayed.

Martinez said last week's numbers looked better than the week before, and if that trend continues, he said the danger of moving to crisis staffing will be slim by the month's end.

Ashely King, communications director for Geary Community Hospital, said the hospital staff has been administering close to 100 COVID-19 tests per day in drive-through testing. Emergency Room staff are especially overwhelmed, and people are asked to call the hospital's COVID hotline if they have symptoms that are not life-threatening, instead of coming to the hospital. King said the hotline receives around 150-200 calls a day currently.

To compensate for the large number of staff out sick or in quarantine, King said the healthy, working employees add more to their plates and shift jobs to help accomplish everything that needs done. The staff are encouraged not to go anywhere outside of work, to lessen the chances they will get sick.

"We are all trying to pick up the pieces to make sure that our patients and community get taken care up like they deserve," she said. "We are hoping that in the next couple weeks, it starts declining. Some of the states that were ahead of us are starting to decline now, so that gives us hope that there's some light at the end of this tunnel."

King said they were at 44% positivity rate in the hospital's COVID testing last week and 51% the week before. Although that change is not largely significant, she said the hospital staff hoped it was the start of a heavy decline in cases. However, on Friday, the hospital reported a positivity rate of 52.9% and urged people to continue to social distance and wear masks.

"At the beginning of this pandemic, our entire nation really shut down," she said. "If you look at statistics and our numbers and our positivity rate between then and now, we are 100% worse now than we were three years ago."

To help reduce the cases, King and Martinez said people need to slow the spread by getting vaccinated, wearing their masks regardless of vaccination status and by getting tested after getting symptoms or after a known or suspected exposure.

"It is expected that by the end of January, we should start to see a decline in the number of COVID-19 patients with the second wave of holiday patients recovering," Martinez said. " This will bring staff back into the system, and beds will begin opening up again."