WENATCHEE — A recent infusion of new staff at Confluence Health has improved the health care provider’s low staff counts, but it’s just a short-term solution to a long-term issue, said Dr. Jason Lake, chief medical officer.
A 20-person team of medical staff, active-duty Navy personnel from all over the United States like Virginia and Chicago, arrived Oct. 22 through a state Department of Health and U.S. Department of Defense contract. The team is here to help with both COVID and non-COVID patients, Lake said.
Confluence Health is one of 11 health care centers nationally to get Defense Department teams.
Lake said that when they had heard about the program in August and applied in September, Confluence Health was facing a severe staff shortage and largest surge of COVID-19 patients at Central Washington Hospital.
But he said he could not explain for sure why Confluence Health was selected for the support.
“I do think that COVID rates within our region at the time of our application played a factor into that,” Lake said. “I also think that there was a recognition from the Department of Health that they wanted us to be able to accept patients from our regional hospitals or regional critical access hospitals. And at that point, were having difficulty doing that because of a lack of staffing.”
Confluence Health has the Defense Department team for 30 days at least. They have applied for a 30-day extension, but other organizations that have done the same have seen their requests denied, according to Lake.
Another 10 civilian nurses and nurse assistants arrived on Oct. 23 through ACI Federal, a company that supplies medical professionals across the country and is also contracted with the state Department of Health. Lake said that in the next couple days or so they expect another 10 or 15 more staff members to arrive.
The ACI personnel are scheduled to depart by the end of the year, Lake said.
Confluence Health’s staffing challenges were also recently stretched thin by the state’s vaccine mandate for private healthcare workers. As of Oct. 18, Confluence Health saw 90 resignations due to the mandate.
Another 229 staff members applied for a religious or medical exemption and are currently on a 12-week leave of absence. Some staff have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and will return to work sometime in those 12 weeks, according to Lake. But the total number of people returning is unknown, he said.
“We’re trying to give those individuals who are on a leave of absence the space and the freedom to make the personal choice that’s right for them,” Lake said. “And, hopefully, over the course of the next several weeks, we’ll start to get a sense of how many of those may return to work.”
For the time being, several areas at Confluence Health have been limited significantly by the mandate and have required more attention, Lake said.
Staff have been asked to fill in for positions at Confluence Health’s contact center to continue answering phone calls from patients, according to Lake.
Lake said that the number of operating rooms used on a daily basis has decreased due to the staff constraint.
“We continue to try to prioritize as much as possible the patients who really need to get in to surgery and make sure they receive the care they need,” he said.
And some radiology departments in Confluence Health facilities in Moses Lake and Omak also have low staff counts, requiring some adjustments to patient’s schedules, according to Lake.
Confluence Health has posted 109 new staff positions since Oct. 18 when the state’s vaccine deadline hit, according to Confluence Health data.
“If someone that is on a leave of absence, does get vaccinated and wants to come back to work, we’ll try very hard to get them into the same position than before, but if that position is no longer available, we’ll try to get them into a similar type position in the organization.”
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