By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Wood County Hospital is laying off 13 employees as a result of a decrease in demand for non-COVID-19 related care.
Hospital President Stan Korducki said that this is the first time since at least 1996 that the hospital has had to lay off employees. “It took a pandemic to do it.”
The hospital employs about 800, he said.
Korducki said he had to be careful about characterizing those who lost their jobs. “We can’t talk much about Human Resources.” He said the layoffs are “across the organization.”
The hospital is feeling the same strains as other hospitals, large and small, across the country. When the pandemic started, the hospital stopped offering elective procedures. It resumed those back in May but patients with non-COVID-19 health needs, whether mammograms, colonoscopies, ACL injuries, lab tests, or emergency room service, are still uncertain about going to the hospital.
Wood County’s volume is down 15-20 percent.
For three months, Korducki said, the administration has been working to restructure staffing and redesign operations to keep the costs in line with revenues.
Whenever someone left because of retirement or any other reason those positions have not been filled.
That was not enough, leading to the layoffs.
“One of the things we really trying to do is emphasize how diligent we are here to keep hospital safe from infection,” he said. Everyone who enters the hospital wears a mask. The waiting rooms have been redesigned to allow for social distancing. There are fewer places where people can enter.
“Our housekeeping people are working around clock to keep things sanitized,” Korducki said.
He said there’s also concern about people putting off treatment. “We don’t want people to suffer and their conditions get worse.”
Still Korducki characterized the state of the pandemic as being more “half full” than “half empty.”
“The scientific community is working really hard on developing treatments,” he said.
When the pandemic was starting physicians had nothing to treat it with. Now there are treatments for critically ill patients. These include remdesivir and convalescent plasma, where a patient receives a transfusion of plasma from someone who has recovered from COVID-19.
Korducki said work is progressing quickly on treatments that can be given to people in the early stages of the illness.
Researchers are also making progress in their work to develop a vaccine.
Korducki said that the hospital currently has one patient with a COVID diagnosis. The hospital has had, over the course of the pandemic, one or two COVID patients at a time. Most have been ambulatory patients, though a few have needed to be on ventilators.
A couple other patients are being monitored. Their doctors have ordered tests as a precaution.
“Most time we are able to identify and discharge them with a plan and have them recover at home,” Korducki said of other COVID cases the hospital has seen.
