Guest Column

Powell Valley Healthcare continuing to respond to COVID-19

By Terry Odom
Posted 5/28/20

To our community, I first want to extend my sincere gratitude for everyone’s support and understanding as Powell Valley Healthcare has made several changes to our operations during this …

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Guest Column

Powell Valley Healthcare continuing to respond to COVID-19

Posted

To our community, I first want to extend my sincere gratitude for everyone’s support and understanding as Powell Valley Healthcare has made several changes to our operations during this pandemic. Some of the necessary changes have made it challenging for the community to access needed health care services.

From the beginning, our first priority has been to ensure your health and safety and that of our staff. I am extremely proud of the quick response of our staff and how they have worked so closely together to put systems in place to prepare. Fortunately, our community and the Big Horn Basin overall has ducked any type of surge related to the novel coronavirus. Nonetheless, we are prepared and continue to work diligently to ensure that resources are in place to help protect the health and safety of patients.

We also want to say thank you to the many people and businesses in the community who have reached out with kind words, treats and food for staff, offers to help make protective garments and other kind gestures. Thank you also to the Powell Hospital District Board members for the support and encouragement they have given to all of us.

As we enter the month of June, PVHC staff will be wearing masks and we are asking anyone coming into our facilities to please wear a mask. With the rise in cases in communities in the Big Horn Basin and around the state, the opening up of travel and the increase in tourism, PVHC is taking further steps in protecting our staff, patients and community members by masking everyone.

Up until now, Wyoming and most specifically, Park County has had an extremely low incidence of COVID-19. While we would like to keep everything as normal as we can and share our smiles with you, we understand the concerns people have regarding use of masks to help prevent the spread of the virus.

As you may have read in recent publications, Powell Valley Healthcare is working to get back to normal operations as much as possible to serve the health care needs of the community. We want to ensure everyone that we are taking the necessary precautions to provide safe care for you and your family. We continue to screen all of our staff and patients entering our facilities. A COVID hotline number is in place for anyone to call who has symptoms, questions or concerns. That number is 307-754-1242.

We also have a respiratory screening clinic designated for anyone with COVID or flu-like symptoms, where testing and further evaluations may be needed. At the clinic, in addition to regularly scheduled appointments, we have initiated the option of virtual care for patients. This allows patients to meet with their provider through video conferencing.

We have also been providing community paramedicine for patients who have had difficulty getting to the clinic or are at high risk of serious complications from COVID-19. Our surgery team is up and running with outpatient surgery, endoscopy and pain management procedures and our medical providers continuously assess any type of risk associated with COVID-19 and pre-screen patients prior to scheduling surgeries.

We had moved wellness lab screening to the main clinic building temporarily to accommodate the respiratory screening clinic and have now moved it back to clinic building A. Wellness labs are available to the community on Tuesdays and Fridays from 6:30-11 a.m. We are also welcoming back visiting physicians to building A, beginning in early June. Our imaging team is back to full operation, again providing mammography screening and bone density (DEXA) screening as well as other radiological tests. Our cardiopulmonary department has now resumed outpatient services. The hospital Gift Shop is now open and welcoming two customers at a time in the shop — with their masks, of course.

I want to ensure the community that Powell Valley Healthcare is here for you in this difficult and uncertain time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Terry Odom is the CEO of Powell Valley Healthcare.)

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