Gov. Asa Hutchinson is mobilizing more National Guard troops to assist with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the public health emergency, Hutchinson has deployed National Guard troops in various roles to shore up health and relief efforts.
On Monday, July 20, he announced that he would be activating 10 National Guard troops for Washington Regional Medical Center. These guardsmen, he said, will be assisting with the hospital’s case management efforts for 30 days.
“This is a short-term relief effort for the hospital to help them as they requested to be able to identify additional resources that might help and we’ll work with them to accomplish that,” he said.
Washington Regional Medical System chief operating officer and administrator Birch G. Wright later released a statement, attributing the need for assistance to the “prolonged surge” of hospitalizations due to COVID-19. The health system has initiated its first phase for its surge capacity plan for COVID-19 patients.
“Northwest Arkansas is in the midst of a prolonged surge in the number of individuals who require hospitalization for COVID-19, and Washington Regional has experienced a steady increase in the number of individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 since early May. Last week, we implemented an initial phase of our surge capacity plan and opened a third critical care unit devoted to the care of COVID-19 patients. However, we have never reached our capacity or been concerned that we were about to reach our capacity. Our request for assistance from the National Guard, which we are grateful to Governor Hutchinson for approving, is simply to obtain some support that will permit us to assign nursing staff who have been performing clerical functions to the bedside, which in turn will provide our clinical care nursing staff, who have been tirelessly working for many months, with some much-needed rest,” Wright said.
“In addition to the request we have made of the National Guard, we have posted positions for additional staff and asked our community health care partners for individuals with critical care experience to work on an as needed basis in Washington Regional’s critical care units.”
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