Thousands of health care workers ready to step in if Kentucky hospitals swamped
Thousands of additional health care professionals are being assembled — only on paper, for now — to assist with Kentucky patients under the terms of the novel coronavirus relief bill that Kentucky lawmakers sent to Gov. Andy Beshear on Thursday.
Although much of the bill deals with unemployment benefits and aid for businesses closed to avoid spreading the virus, it also would authorize a small army to step in if the pandemic swamps Kentucky’s hospitals in coming weeks. Hospitals in New York, Illinois, Louisiana and other states have been overwhelmed by coronavirus cases, the New York Times reported Thursday.
“We’re just trying to get ready. We do have a finite number of licensed health care practitioners in the state,” said state Rep. Kimberly Poore Moser, R-Taylor Mill, in an interview on Friday.
Among its many provisions, during the current state of emergency, Senate Bill 150 would:
▪ Let the state medical and nursing boards waive the usual licensing requirements so that health care professionals who practice in other states or who have retired and relinquished their licenses can work in Kentucky. This would cover doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians.
▪ Let medical students conduct triage, diagnose and treat patients under the supervision of licensed health care providers.
▪ Let doctors who ordinarily practice in one medical field switch over and assist in another as necessary.
Kentucky has idled many medical professionals at present with Beshear’s recent order canceling all non-emergency health care. Doctors, who rotate through different fields during their medical school training, can be redeployed in a pinch, Moser said.
“An ophthalmologist is not providing elective services right now, so they could provide internal medicine care,” she said. “It’s an all hands on deck approach.”
The relief bill provides civil legal immunity to health care providers who act in good faith either to treat COVID-19 patients or other patients as directed outside their specialty “for any personal injury resulting from said care or treatment, or from any act or failure to act in providing or arranging further medical treatment.”
As of Friday, 2,812 doctors had signed up with the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure under the emergency registration system, most of them out-of-state doctors practicing in Tennessee and Indiana, said Leanne Diakov, the board’s general counsel. If they are called to duty, those doctors likely would provide telehealth services by video, freeing up Kentucky doctors to provide direct care, Diakov said.
At a news conference on Monday, the state’s public health commissioner, Dr. Steven Stack, said more than 200 medical students had volunteered to assist with the COVID-19 response. He said he planned to make a similar request of nursing students.
“I am very proud of that community and all the others I know will step forward,” Stack said.
