Cooperative Living January 2021 - 17

The center's priority was COVID patients, tracking
them and letting them know the health care
professionals were working on their behalf.
Delivering the message was a necessary, though
not always comfortable, task.
MARSH: I think the hardest message to get out is, " Yes, for
you or your child, it may seem more mild than the flu. But it
also could be the opposite and put both of you into the ICU. "
It's very hard to communicate that. Part of it is COVID fatigue.
You can only quarantine so many times. We have lots of
families who say, " If I stay home again, I'm going to lose my
job. " Or it's a single parent and they don't have any food and
don't have a smartphone to easily do grocery pickup.
WALDENMAIER: I think the people who needed calming
down were not necessarily the ones who had it, but the people
that potentially were exposed. " Do I need a test? Do I have
symptoms? What do I need to do about work? How much
work do I need to miss? "
LUCAS: We had a collaboration with the hospital [Riverside
Shore Memorial Hospital] that if someone was sick enough
that they needed a chest X-ray, rather than bringing them into
our building here, they went to the hospital. It was kind of a
community decision on where we send the sickest people.
MARSH: Luckily, I would say Eastern Shore Rural Health
did a great job of having a team of people who could do the
education so it did not fall to just us, because we were busy
trying to see people in the building. There's no way we could
have called back 50 people at the end of the day to calm
them down or reassure them.
COMMUNICATING ABOUT COVID
Here are some of the ways in which Eastern Shore Rural Health
System Inc. got the word out to a diverse, rural population mix:
* Weekly ads in local newspapers
* Spots on local radio stations including Spanish-speaking stations
* Information on websites in English, Spanish and Creole
* Facebook patient info posts in English, Spanish and Creole
* Brief videos in Spanish as part of Spanish Facebook posts
* Phone hold recordings with COVID-19 messages
* Outreach to major employers
* Grassroots efforts to Spanish- and Creole-speaking citizens via churches,
agricultural contacts, small grocery store/markets and other outlets
* Assisted health department with messaging
" We have to have extra
precautions in place,
our mask and our shields.
That's our job. "
- Dr. Nicole Marsh
With testing finally in abundance, the center continues
to check for COVID-19 among all patients - raising
the question of how you check newborns.
MARSH: It's the same way you test older people. You're just
glad that they're not old enough to fight you. Newborns aren't
a problem. You can hold them down a lot easier than you
can a 3-year-old.
WALDENMAIER: With 7- and 8-year-olds,
you have your mask and all of your stuff on.
They're in their car. They don't know what
you're going to do to them and they're
strong. They will not turn their heads toward
you and you're just trying to get them to
look at you, so you can swab them. And
they'll remember that experience for years.
Through Oct. 31, Eastern Shore Regional Health
System provided 10,616 telemedicine visits and
4,627 COVID tests. But there's still uncertainty
about the long-term effects of COVID patients
on the Eastern Shore.
LUCAS: Any potential COVID symptoms now, we're still
seeing telemed. The increase in the use of telemed is probably
one of the good things to come out of this.
MARSH: I think everybody did a great job of just saying,
" OK, life is now completely different and we have to shift
gears. " Everybody was willing to jump in and do what needed
to be done. Christine has swabbed probably thousands of
people by this point. She always does it with a smile under
that mask. Just like the rest of the country, we are COVIDfatigued.
But we have to have the extra precautions in place,
our masks and our shields. That's our job. 
First telemedicine visit performed. Copayments
are waived for telehealth visits
(visits performed by phone or video).
co-opliving.com
Staff split into A and B teams to social
distance and minimize staff exposed to
virus by single patient encounter.
First COVID-19 death
on Virginia's Eastern
Shore.
ESRHS commits to no staff
layoffs during COVID-19
pandemic.
January 2021 | Cooperative Living | 15
MARCH 24
APRIL 6
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IN APRIL
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Cooperative Living January 2021

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