Rural hospital saw peak of coronavirus cases higher than Wichita healthcare system
Officials at one of the hardest-hit rural hospitals in Kansas during the COVID-19 pandemic have started to catch their breath after hitting a peak of cases earlier in the month.
Southwest Medical Center in Seward County had prepared for as many as 22 patients. It hit that number between May 3-4, necessitating a Blackhawk helicopter to deliver an emergency shipment of ventilators to the hospital. The number of cases was the maximum the hospital had resources to treat and was a couple more cases than the much larger Ascension Via Christi in Wichita saw at its peak in the middle of April.
Besides a significant cluster of cases at a meatpacking facility in its own town of Liberal, the hospital also took patients from a cluster at a meatpacking operation 45 minutes away in Oklahoma. The 101-bed facility also had COVID-19 patients from Texas, according to Robin Allaman, Southwest’s vice president of patient care services.
Seward County has a population of about 21,000 people, but the hospital draws from an area covering about 90,000 people in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado, Allaman said.
She was surprised to learn the hospital saw a peak of more cases than Ascension Via Christi.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” Allaman said. “I have to say I am incredibly proud of the team, because we did pull from many different parts of the hospital.”
According to physician Akshath Kamath, “We were stretched probably to our maximum ability to take care of COVID patients at that point.”
He said the fear is the cases could spike again now that statewide restrictions are loosening. He said cases in Germany started to spike after officials eased lockdowns there.
“The curve was flattened and maybe going down, and then they saw a spike,” Kamath said.
Kansas hospitalizations appear to have peaked
Toward the end of last week, Southwest reported 13 COVID-19 patients, with four of them on ventilators. Ascension Via Christi had nine infected patients that day, but the numbers constantly change.
Wesley Medical Center spokesperson Dave Stewart would not provide specific numbers. In an email, he said the hospital has “seen a consistent and manageable number of COVID-19 patients over the past three weeks.”
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has reported at least 740 hospitalizations statewide as of Monday.
Testing skyrockets at meatpacking clusters
The state reports new cases of coronavirus on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Monday, clusters at meatpacking facilities accounted for roughly 38% of the 454 new cases since Friday.
Six deaths have been attributed to clusters at 10 meatpacking facilities.
Federal efforts to keep meatpacking and food processing facilities open led to the Kansas National Guard helping administer daily testing around mid-April in three southwest Kansas counties — Ford, Finney and Seward — and one eastern county, Lyon.
On April 15, before the additional testing, those counties made up less than 6% of the cases. The latest data puts those four counties at about 46% of cases.
Before the National Guard arrived in Finney County, health officials there had performed a daily high of 18 tests. That number climbed to 188 by May 11. Since then, the average has been between 100 and 130 tests a day, according to Maggie Unruh, the Finney County Health Department community health educator.
Eli Svaty, the Seward County public information officer, said testing in his county rose from 25-30 people a day to 100-120 a day when the National Guard arrived. It’s since dropped to about 60 a day.
Hospitalizations in both counties peaked at the beginning of May.
St. Catherine Hospital in Finney County saw a peak of 17 COVID-19 hospitalizations on May 6, Unruh said. They were down to eight toward the end of last week.
In Ford County, Western Plains Regional Hospital referred questions about hospitalizations to the KDHE, whose numbers can lag behind. For example, the KDHE reports Seward County has had 21 hospitalizations but hospital officials reported at least 84.
Svaty said the clusters that have impacted Seward County — National Beef in Liberal and Seaboard Foods in Guymon, Oklahoma —were significant but would not give specifics.
National Beef Packing Company employs about 3,500 people, Svaty said. Seaboard Foods, the pork processing plant across the state line in Guymon, employs about 2,500 people, according to the company’s website.
Adding to Seward County’s caseload
Texas County, Oklahoma, where Guymon is located, has the third most cases in Oklahoma, with 752. Memorial Hospital of Texas County — a 25-bed facility that has struggled to keep its doors open — has had to send COVID-19 patients to other facilities, according to the Woodward (Okla.) News.
Some patients, it reported, were sent to AllianceHealth Woodward, which is nearly two hours away.
Since, Southwest Medical Center is closer — being 45 minutes away — critical patients are often taken across state lines.
Southwest had the perfect storm to see the most patients of any rural hospital in Kansas. The county ranks fifth in most cases but has the potential to be much higher when including the cases in Texas County, Oklahoma. The same could be said for the Kansas City area when considering crossing state lines but that area has a much more robust network of healthcare systems.
Rural survival
Being a community hospital can have its setbacks. Southwest doesn’t have access to the resources, such as shared staffing and equipment, that the hospital systems in Finney and Ford counties do.
After making a specially designed unit walled off by plastic barriers, Southwest had the capacity to hold 22 patients: 10 in the intensive care unit and 12 in the designed unit.
On May 3, the hospital, which had few ventilators, was able to get an emergency shipment of four more. The National Guard flew them in by helicopter after calls were made to U.S. Rep. Roger Marshall.
Between May 3 and May 4, when the hospital hit its capacity, it had to transfer some patients to other hospitals. During the period of maximum capacity, nine of the 10 patients on ventilators were linked to the meatpacking facilities — five to National Beef and four to Seaboard Foods — Kamath, the Seward County physician, said.
Kamath said he knew of three hospital staff members that got sick but figures there were more.
“I just hope that people follow common sense and people ... make their own due diligence,” Kamath said. “And not have, you know, unnecessary get-togethers or meetings outside (of what’s allowed), which might lead to another spike in cases.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 4:51 AM.