Holroyd, Suzanne

From: Holroyd, Suzanne

Sent: Thursday, April 2, 2020 1:42 PM
To: 'Stephens, Terry'; Mark Hughes (markahughesmd@gmail.com)
Cc: Murphy, Scott; Kuhn, Steven
Subject: COVID prevention in hospital psych setting

Importance: High

HI Terry and Mark,

I wanted to share what Bateman (MMBH) is doing to prevent COVID in the vulnerable inpt psych population. Cafeteria is
closed, patients stay in their rooms at all times and food, medicines, snacks, therapy and activities are brought to them.
Treatment teams are held virtually using skype for business, or at times, by speaker phone. Any pt under investigation
for COVID who isn’t following the rules can be restrained if necessary to keep others safe.
All staff wear N95 masks (they were given one which they save and wear daily) and inter floor travel by staff is
eliminated. For example, dietary or med carts are brought to the door of the floor and nurses take it, reducing change of
spreading any virus floor to floor etc. There is only one entrance now to MMBH and every day, each staff member
including physicians, nurses, dietary, housekeeping etc has their temperature checked and must fill out a screening form
before being allowed in the hospital. As of today, physicians are seeing pts remotely using laptops, as the physicians
were a group that was going from floor to floor, increasing change of spreading virus floor to floor.

Residents who work at River Park on weekends and during assigned rotations have shared that these sort of preventive
and safety measure aren’t yet present at RP. Given COVID is present in our community with cases at CHH and SMMC, I
wanted to make you aware so you can reduce chances of an outbreak at RP. The residents have been told to wear N95
masks at all times and will do so at RP. I am writing with genuine concern, because should a case turn positive for COVID
at RP, without these measure in place, many staff and patients will be infected and become Ill. If you have any questions
how this was implemented at MMBH, please let me know, as RP and MMBH have similar populations. I have also cc’d
Dr. Scott Murphy, who is Deputy Medical Director at MMBH, should you have any questions re implementation. Perhaps
surprisingly, patients and staff adapted quite well to the new rules and everyone feels safer.

Sincerely,

Suzanne

Suzanne Holroyd MD
Professor and Chair
Program Director – Psychiatry and Geriatric Psychiatry
Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine
Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine
Marshall University