Gig Harbor hospital treating its 2nd and 3rd coronavirus patients; others awaiting test results

St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor has treated three confirmed COVID-19 patients so far and is gearing up to handle more, CHI Franciscan’s division director said.

As of Friday, the hospital had two confirmed cases remaining and several possible cases awaiting test results, said Matt Metsker, who directs resources for eight regional hospitals from Franciscan’s ”mission control” center in Gig Harbor. The original patient, a man in his 50s from Puyallup who entered the hospital March 6, has recovered and been released.

Pierce County was reporting 126 cases on Monday, with one death. Of the county total, 12 were in the Gig Harbor area, which is usually taken to include the Key Peninsula. The state total was 1,221 confirmed cases, with 110 deaths.

Not all of the people who have tested positive have been hospitalized. Those who have minor symptoms have been sent home to self-quarantine.

By Monday, CHI Franciscan has screened more than 16,500 people at 11 triage centers, including one in Gig Harbor, and referred about 1,200 for testing, the health provider said.

In addition to the two confirmed cases, St. Anthony’s has also admitted “multiple” people showing symptoms who have been tested and are waiting for results, Metsker said. The number varies day to day, but is usually between five and ten, he said.

Not everyone who is waiting for test results is admitted, he added. Some people waiting for results, called “ruleouts” in hospital shorthand, are sent home to self-quarantine if their symptoms are mild. Others may be given a hospital isolation bed.

“In each of our hospital sites, we have workers trained to recognize people who should be isolated,” Metsker told The Gateway. “We don’t want them sitting around among large groups of people in waiting rooms. We talk to people as the come in about their symptoms, their contacts, their travel history, their existing morbidities, and we get the serious cases into isolation right away.”

“Of you’re sick enough, you’ll get admitted. If not, you may get sent home. If you’re very,very ill, you could be admitted to a critical care unit.”

The hospital has canceled or postponed all but emergency surgeries, freeing up rooms and beds to be used for coronavirus treatment.

St. Anthony continues to ask people who feel mildly ill to visit its local triage center, rather than going to the emergency room. The triage center is located at Franciscan Prompt Care, 4700 Point Fosdick Drive N.W. Symptoms include high fever, a dry cough. shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. If a test for COVID-19 is warranted, patients will be referred for one.

There is also a triage center at Harrison Port Orchard Urgent Care, 450 S. Kitsap Blvd. in Port Orchard.

The hospital is not billing patients for coronaviris screening or testing. Instead, CHI Franciscan said, they will try to work out cost-sharing agreements with insurers, federal, state and local officials.

Visitation at St. Anthony continues to be limited. No visitors are allowed except under special circumstances, including end-of-life, childbirth, natal intensive care, special care nursery, and caregivers in certain situations.

Children 12 and under are restricted from visiting.

Modern construction helped

St. Anthony and other Franciscan hospitals isolate suspected COVID-19 patients by putting them in “negative air flow” rooms, which have been configured to allow air to flow in, but not out. Nurses and others who enter the rooms wear full protective clothing, including face masks.

St. Anthony, as a relatively new hospital, had the advantage of a design that allowed the high-volume air-conditioning, or HVAC, system to be quickly reconfigured to add additional negative air-flow rooms, Metsker said. System-wide, Chi Franciscan has raised its negative air-flow room capacity from 40 to more than 100.

It had also just opened a new floor, its fifth, in 2018, and thus had plenty of space for more beds. The $15.6 million expansion added 32 beds to what was to become the hospital’s surgical floor. With most surgeries now postponed, those beds are available.

“Those surgical nurses can now be redeployed, as well,” Metsker said. “It helped us add extra capacity very quickly.”

Metsker, a Peninsula native who grew up on Raft Island, is a physician’s assistant who formerly practiced internal medicine at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma. He now presides over a control center in Gig Harbor that coordinates patient logistics — things like nurse staffing and bed control.

“We look at beds as a system,” he explained. “Where we used to have some hospitals with empty beds and some too full, we can now balance the patient load among all eight facilities We’re like an air traffic control for 1,300 beds.”

Besides St. Anthony, the center manages logistics for St. Joseph, St. Claire in Lakewood, St. Francis in Federal Way, St. Elizabeth in Enumclaw, Highline Medical Center in Burien and the two Harrison Medical Centers in Bremerton and Silverdale.

“Most, but not all, of our sites now have confirmed cases of COVID-19,” Metsker said. So far, it has not strained the system, he said.

“We are being really creative about how to use our resources,” he said. “We have executive staff calls daily regarding staffing, protecting our work force, and other issues.”

A challenge in the coming weeks will be keeping an adequate supply of personal protective equipment, in light of a regional shortage, he said. The Franciscan system currently has an adequate supply, but its hospitals are “trying to stay ahead of the curve,” by drawing on its parent system, Chicago-based CommonSpirit Heath, Metsker said.

Kilmer joins in ventilator request

In related development, U.S. Rep Derek Kilmer (D-WA) of Gig Harbor joined a bipartisan group of 17 members of Congress from the Pacific Northwest in calling for more ventilators to be sent to the region and for the administration to develop a national manufacturing goal for new ventilators.

“Our hospitals across the region have grown more concerned that in a short time they will be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients as intensive care unit capacity is reached,” said the lawmakers in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, the administration’s lead on the COVD-19 response.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently announced that he is providing 2,000 ventilators to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to support the ongoing response to COVID-19. The resources are especially needed in the Pacific Northwest which has disproportionately fewer ventilators than the rest of the county.

Data collected by HHS and the American Association for Respiratory Care shows that Washington and Oregon only have 13 ventilators per 100,000 people and Idaho only has 12 ventilators per 100,000 people. Comparatively, the state median number of ventilators per 100,000 people is 20.5.

“Washington state does not have enough ventilators to care for the number of patients who may need them if the virus continues to spread at this rate. All supplies are critically low, and our residents need this support to stay safe,” said Cassie Sauer, President and CEO of the Washington State Hospital Association.

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This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 7:15 PM.