With No Cases In
10 Days, Bassett
Looks Past Virus
Hospital Aims To Restore ‘Full
Range Of Healthcare Services’
By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com
COOPERSTOWN – “We’re looking forward to resuming our profession: taking care of our community,” Bassett Healthcare CEO Bill Streck declared at a press conference that may bookend Otsego County’s coronavirus era.
At the first bookend, a March 13 press conference, Streck and Drs. Bill LeCates, hospital president; Steve Heneghan, chief clinical officer, and Charles Hyman, infectious diseases specialist, discussed preparations for an uncertain future.
Today, the four discussed the end of a crisis and what Streck called “what life is going to be for the immediate future.”
The news was pretty much all good. In the past 10 days, there have been no deaths at Bassett Hospital (and only four since the first press conference); no new cases have surfaced.
Yesterday, Governor Cuomo announced Otsego County is in one of the first three of 10 economic development regions – the Mohawk Valley, plus the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes – can enter Phase One of reopening on Friday.
“We are ready,” Streck said. “We are more than ready: We are already ramping up.”
With the go-ahead last week to resume elective surgeries and with ER and other essential services provided during the COVID-19 months, Bassett is only 15 percent in patient visitations for the year’s first four-plus months.
Looking ahead, LeCates said, the focus is “how to keep our patients safe. How to keep our employees safe.”
Right off, patients’ will have their temperature taken at the hospital’s entrance – above normal is one indication of the virus. “Waiting rooms will look empty,” he added. With scheduling adjustments, “lines shouldn’t exist.”
Heneghan praised the staff: “They have kept the community well,” and the effort goes on.
He used South Korea as a model to follow. A flare-up was met with rapid response, tracing and intervention. “It was extraordinarily effective.”
At the first press conference, there was a concern about being overwhelmed. Since, Streck said, difference between regions – New York City vs. Upstate – have emerged.
“Bassett did a good job,” he continued. “But I don’t want to overstate what we did.”
The community’s adherence to cautionary measures – social distancing, using masks and hand sanitizers, avoiding crowds – worked, he said.
Asked about “fear” in the community, LeCates said better words to guide the public might be “vigilance” and “surveillance.”
“What we’re doing works,” he said, but it is “both a success and a caution.”
Bassett has done a great job , I’d like to give a shout out to the call center which is overlooked so often , these employees are quite essential for without them I don’t know where the hospital would be , they kept on working thru this crisis like the professionals they are and I hope Bassett management considers doing something special for them!