Health Execs Anticipate Next COVID-19 Phase

With regional municipalities preparing to take the first steps toward lifting restrictions on business and social activity, officials at the University of Kansas Health System say they’ll be doing likewise on the medical front as early as this week.

Speaking at today’s video news conference, Kansas City market president Tammy Peterman said the hospital would gradually lift the restrictions it has had in place for nearly a month on elective surgeries, while tele-health visits would remain a priority and clinic operations would be modified to restrict the potential for patient-to-patient contact.

“We are working with surgeons to identify which patients need to come back in,” Peterman said. “We will do in a gradual, slow way; we need to be thoughtful, methodical about it, but I think we will start to see some cases this week in our operating room. We’re trying to identify the ones that need to come in first” but might not require full anesthesia.

She was joined for the Zoom meeting by Steven Stites, the medical director for the main hospital, along with CEO Bob Page and infectious-disease specialist Dana Hawkinson. Collectively, they covered the public-health aspects of controlling the spread during the coming phase of reopenings, offered thanks for the community support shown for health-care providers, and assessed changes in the way medical care will be delivered going forward.

The latter development, Stites said, was producing a “crazy good story” with increased use of telehealth consultations. “You look for silver linings in cases like this, and this is one,” he said.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the health system would see roughly 4,000 to 6,000 outpatients a day. Even with many of its clinic operations scaled back, he said, last Friday produced 3,800 visits, mostly delivered remotely.

Stites and Hawkinson again stressed that, as restrictions on activity are lifted, personal responsibility will be the determining factor in whether the region can control a surge in infections.

“Unless we have an effective therapy or vaccine or both, there is always risk in reopening society for increased spread of the disease and bringing back another surge,” Stites said. The challenge ahead, he said, would be reopening the businesses that are vital for a thriving economy, yet safeguarding people in ways that will constitute a new normal for social interaction.

“We need people to go in to work and do their jobs,” he said, “but there is a risk inherent in doing that.”

That, said Peterman, is why the message driven by health authorities will continue to to be important moving forward: maintaining social distance, washing hands frequently, not touching your face, nose or eyes, staying at home if you’re sick, and wearing a mask in public.

Stites also cautioned against excessive fear among people reluctant to seek basic care, suggesting that some may be ignoring signs of minor heart attacks, strokes or other illnesses because they don’t want to be exposed to the virus by going out.

The irony, he said, is that the health risks people are taking on in those cases only make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 by increasing the co-morbidity factor associated with the vast majority of deaths from the virus. “Don’t get too sick at home,” he said.