photo by: Screenshot/LMH Health

LMH Health infectious disease doctors (from left) Christopher Penn, Jennifer Schrimsher and Christopher Brychel discuss efforts to mitigate COVID-19 in the hospital and in Douglas County during a Zoom call on May 6.

Douglas County is currently seeing a plateau in COVID-19 cases, not a peak, according to an infectious disease doctor on the team that’s leading LMH Health’s pandemic response.

“Currently, it’s estimated that our peak is actually a plateau, and we are about halfway through our plateau week,” Dr. Christopher Penn said Wednesday afternoon during a Zoom call that the LMH Health Incident Command team organized to provide an update about the hospital’s reopening process.

Penn said the plateau week “should end probably after the weekend at some point and then trail off.” But he added the caveats that estimates change week to week and that the “trail off” is dependent on continued mitigation efforts, such as social distancing and the use of masks.

Penn was one of multiple members of the Incident Command team to give updates during the Zoom call. Jared Abel, who oversees strategy development and implementation, discussed the hospital’s reopening plan and said that LMH Health is resuming elective procedures in a slow and deliberate process. This week, the hospital is operating at approximately 50% of its normal load for outpatient services. Clinicians are identifying and prioritizing patients most in need of services, and Abel said that moving forward each clinic is expected to increase the number of patients it sees each week.

LMH Health has also changed some of its policies in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The hospital has implemented virtual check-ins to prevent patients from congregating in waiting rooms. Patients will call or text from their car to let the hospital know they are there. When hospital staff is ready to see the patient, a nurse will notify the patient and escort them directly to the exam room. In the case that waiting rooms need to be utilized, all chairs have been spaced out 6 feet apart.

In addition, all patients and staff will be masked. The policy prohibiting visitors remains in effect.

Traci Hoopingarner, chief nursing officer at the hospital, said LMH Health is currently configured to accommodate 250 patients in the main hospital building and an additional 14 in the surgery center. She also noted that there are specific floors and rooms designated for COVID-19 patients.

Other news and notes from the Incident Command Zoom call:

• LMH Health President and CEO Russ Johnson said the hospital’s freeze on elective procedures has triggered an operating loss of about $4 million in March. As the Journal-World reported Monday, LMH Health is seeing declines of more than $1 million per week and, because of this, has furloughed over 220 employees.

Despite this, Johnson called LMH Health “strong.”

“We are not in jeopardy. We are in the same place that so many hospitals are,” he said. “In fact, we are in a better place because we have historically been so strong.”

At the end of the call, Johnson assured viewers that the hospital will still be able to take care of the community in a safe manner.

“I hope you can see that we are ready,” Johnson said. “Providing services in a pandemic is complex and it’s tricky. But it can be done, and it can be done safely, and I think you’ve heard from this team and you can see and hear in their voices their capability, their competency, their skill to do this.”

• LMH Health’s current supply of personal protective equipment, or PPE, is good, said Sheryle D’Amico, who oversees physician enterprise. D’Amico said LMH Health tracks its PPE, pharmaceuticals and testing supplies daily.

D’Amico also said LMH Health is able to clean its N95 face masks in order to reuse them, but that the hospital can only clean 30 at a time. She said the Federal Emergency Management Agency will set up a system in Topeka to clean 80,000 masks at once.

• Chris Brychel, an infectious disease doctor, discussed the two types of COVID-19 testing and said that while antibody testing has “picked up a lot of public interest,” the data on its effectiveness is uncertain. He called the viral test — the nose swab that takes a sample from one’s respiratory system — the “gold standard.” Antibody tests, which are used to diagnose retroactively, are not yet reliable enough, Brychel said.