Phoebe vs. COVID

Dec. 24—ALBANY — Throughout the two-year run of the COVID-19 pandemic in southwest Georgia, Phoebe Putney Health System President/CEO Scott Steiner has been the face of local health care as Phoebe staff battled valiantly against the pandemic.

Whether talking to local journalists, giving updates at daily community news conferences, heading daily meetings at the hospital, or being interviewed for some of the nation's most prominent news productions, it was Steiner's calm, we're-weathering-the-storm demeanor that gave southwest Georgians confidence that some way, some how, we'd get through this crisis.

While he revealed his underlying worries and concerns to people who know him best, on the surface, Steiner remained composed, giving off the vibe that, as captain of the Phoebe ship, his hand was steady on the wheel.

The numbers at Phoebe are much lower today than they were in the initial days of the pandemic, when southwest Georgia was No. 3 per capita of COVID cases among the world's hot spots. And while the pandemic has not been trivialized due to its current "manageability," it certainly isn't the overwhelming concern it was two years ago.

Maybe that's why it was so surprising — and so touching — to see this man of steel succumb to emotion as he talked recently about the ordeal of guiding Phoebe through the storm of the pandemic.

"We got things like this from the community throughout the early stages of COVID," Steiner says, handing over a homemade card from "Kaylyn" that said, in a kid's scrawl, "Thank you for working to keep everyone healthy ... Don't give up." The message on the front of the card: "You are making a difference every day. Thank you."

"Those cards, the concern from the community was powerful," Steiner said, his voice breaking. "When I think about the community's concern and us asking staff to work extra hours, that weighs heavily ..."

Tears that had threatened to overspill his eyelids slid down Steiner's cheeks, and he took a moment to compose himself.

"The pride I feel for what this team did ... I just can't put it into words," Steiner said.

One of his early concerns as word of COVID-19's impact in China spread was, first, whether or not the virus would reach these shores, and second, whether Phoebe staff had the tools and equipment needed to fight it here if it did.

Dr. Eddie Black, the chief medical officer at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, said such eventualities were discussed well before the first case of COVID was reported at the hospital.

"In late 2019, when reports of COVID-19 in China were broadcast, Scott, (Emergency Preparedness Coordinator) Gary Rice and I started talking about what we might need in the eventuality this virus came here," Black said. "We started reaching out to all of our suppliers and others in big cities across the country, looking for an opportunity to get ahead with supplies."

When the first case was diagnosed at Phoebe, Steiner told The Albany Herald, "We're allowed to order 25% more than our normal supplies, so we'd done that for the four or five months prior to COVID, the thinking being that at least we were well-supplied and ahead of the game."

When that overabundance of protective equipment and supplies was run through in a matter of days, though, the Phoebe braintrust knew they were in for a bumpy ride.

On March 9, because only two laboratories in the nation had the capacity to analyze COVID tests, Phoebe had unwittingly hosted a patient in its care who was actually deemed "Patient 0" as southwest Georgia became one of the biggest COVID hot spots in the world. That person, who had attended a funeral in Albany, and his wife ended up infecting a number of people at the funeral, and the snowball started rolling.

"We hadn't heard from the laboratory conducting the testing on March 9, but at 11 o'clock that night (former Phoebe Chief Medical Officer) Dr. (Steve) Kitchen called and said the CDC had just notified him that our patient tested positive," Steiner said. "We opened our command center the next day.

"The inability to test for the virus was probably the biggest failure of the whole pandemic. Because we'd had to wait several days, we learned through contact tracing that 110 of our employees had had contact with that patient. We quarantined them, sent them home."

But the damage had been done.

Soon the number of COVID patients at Phoebe skyrocketed. The hospital system halted all elective surgeries and even had to send some patients to other area health care facilities because its facilities were overrun.

"The fear of the unknown became the staff's biggest concern," Steiner said. "Some people quit, and even today I don't blame them. There were no known treatments that we could use; we had no idea how this thing was spreading. We didn't know how long the virus could survive on surfaces; we didn't know if the masks worked; there was no testing reliability.

"We're in the health care industry, and we're taught to be in control. There was no control at this time. And loss of control is one of the greatest preceptors for fear."

Phoebe officials started reaching out to other area hospitals for help, and since Phoebe's immediate coverage area was one of the earliest and hardest hit, other facilities worked with the Albany hospital to help care for its overflow.

"Some reached out to us and told us they would do whatever they could — the CEO in Columbus talked with their board and told me, 'Send us six,'" Steiner said. "Then she called later and said, 'Send four more.'

"There were, though, hospitals that refused to take our patients, even though they had room."

As Phoebe's front line staff worked to make the hospital's growing list of patients as comfortable as possible, treating their symptoms because there was still no clear treatment for the virus itself, hospital management started reaching out to sources the country over.

The health system's new chief medical officer, Dr. Dianna Grant, who'd at the time only recently arrived from Chicago, started calling on her fellow health care professionals in the nation's second-largest city.

"I put on my Cook County (Illinois) hat," Grant said. "I'd spent 16 years there, and I had a network of friends who'd seen us on the news reach out and say, 'What do you need?'

"And Scott (Steiner) asked me one time, 'How did you build such an extensive system of friends in this industry?' I had close friends, phenomenal people, from the AMA, the National Medical Association, family practitioners in South Carolina, Atlanta, Texas, D.C. who flooded my network. I told him I'm that unicorn that showed up, and I was working with my network to find solutions."

Communications, Black said, was key to helping minimize the spread of the virus. He became the face of Phoebe at those public news conferences, a hometown hero who gave up seemingly can't-refuse opportunities to come back home and practice medicine.

"As the world spotlight was focused on Albany, there was pressure to get the right message out to the people," Black said. "People expect us, as health care professionals, to know about the treatment for stroke, for heart attacks, for sepsis. Why wouldn't they expect us to know about the coronavirus as well?

"I was very proud of our response to the public, and I was very proud of our response in the hospital with our patients. We were working with an unknown with no end in sight. But these people came to work every day, did their jobs. That inspired me. When I saw the custodial staff and the food services folks at their station every morning at 4 and 5 o'clock, how could I not show up?"

Steiner, who has insisted throughout the virus that God brought him from Detroit to Albany for a purpose, said the Phoebe Family never lost hope during its fight with COVID.

"I think this staff showed what is possible when people pull together, putting aside whatever creates the negative noise, and pull in the same direction," he said. "We were able to do that because we loved each other, we loved our hospital and we loved our community. They would not let themselves be defeated."

Black, said that, despite numbers that have remained low for months now, the hospital will remain vigilant in its treatment of the coronavirus and COVID.

"We'll remain poised to respond," he said. "Now, we have the tools to fight with and more knowledge about what we're dealing with.

"My dad (late Albany State University President Billy C. Black) always told me something that's stuck with me throughout my life: 'The worst thing that can come out of a disaster is if you learn nothing from it.' We learned."