photo by: Contributed

LMH Health's main campus at 325 Maine St.

Most of us sat snug inside our homes over the weekend as a blizzard made travel nearly impossible, but that wasn’t an option for essential hospital staff, who had to care for patients and be on hand for winter emergencies.

A Lawrence police officer used his personal vehicle to get nine members of LMH Health’s nursing staff in for the overnight Sunday shift, said Mimi Meredith, a spokesperson for the hospital. And on Monday morning, other staff and the community pitched in to get employees home through the snow. Also Monday the Food Service team learned the food delivery truck couldn’t get to the hospital, so “our food services manager managed to get out in his own vehicle to get supplies to ensure patients and staff would be fed,” Meredith said.

Meredith said he hospital’s Incident Command group began meeting on Friday in preparation for the storm, but the safety and facilities team had been preparing even earlier with Douglas County Emergency Management since the first forecasts came out. Incident Command has been meeting three times a day since, with many individuals taking on additional assignments and roles to help, Meredith said.

“Things considered included obvious ones for any business, such as snow removal, but also ensuring our medical and food supplies and fuel for backup generators were in good supply. Our facilities team worked through the night on Saturday and all day Sunday to keep parking lots and walkways clear at the hospital,” she said.

Inside the hospital, staff prepared to spend the night Saturday night if they couldn’t get home.

“Our Environmental Services team, nurses, doctors, laboratory and imaging staff — everyone involved in patient care who could make it in did. It was a great demonstration of teamwork and dedication,” she said.

By Sunday, the amount of snow was the challenge for the next shift coming in. That’s when the officer pitched in to get nurses to the hospital.

Though clinics and outpatient services were closed Monday, the hospital remaining open was critical and the team’s top priority.

“We even had a member of our Board of Trustees offer for staff to stay at her home near the hospital,” Meredith said. “It was a great example of what it means to be a community hospital. The people making the decisions all live here — they knew what it meant for someone in a rural area to try to get to work through the snow and what critical issues needed to be addressed.”

Meredith said that by Saturday afternoon the hospital had been treating an increased number of people in the Emergency Department for fractures because of the icy conditions.

The Journal-World reached out early Monday to Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical about any issues that may have arisen with ambulance calls, but had not heard back by Monday afternoon.