BCH Officials Appreciate Community Support

Officials with the Beatrice Community Hospital are expressing thanks to the community for their support and understanding of the hospital’s policies during the coronavirus pandemic. Visitors are still not allowed and the cafeteria remains closed. Anyone entering the hospital must wear a mask and those coming into one of the clinics are being screened at the front door.

C-E-O Rick Haraldson says the hospital remains prepared for Covid-19 patients.

"As of Tuesday, we had 534 tests in Gage County with 41 positives. The hospital has in our ten bed covid set-up wing has taken care of two patients who tested positive. We kept them in the community and taken care of them along with numerous people that we have had in there that we ruled out where they come in with some symptoms  and to figure out if they have the covid...waiting for some of those test results. That has gone really remarkably smoothly as we have been able to manage that."

Haraldson says the hospital now has the ability to test for Covid-19 in-house. By testing at the hospital, he says results can be obtained much faster than before…

"We can do our own in-house testing now with the same sensitivity test that is being done at the state and the CDC. We have just been able to start doing that. What is the key benefit to that is that we have been able to get a turnaround time of within 24 hours which is much better than at the height the state was about 5 to 6 days by the time we would take a test and get the results back".

Senior Executive Eric Trusty says the hospital has started to offer some elective surgeries and will slowly work at getting back to normal.

Trusty says the clinics have been returning to normal hours and the use of Telehealth appointments has proven successful.

Haraldson says getting back to normal will be a slow process with keeping the staff and patient’s health and safety as a top priority.

Hospital officials encourage anyone who thinks they may have Covid-19 to call the toll free number to determine if they should be tested. That number is 1-800-859-0240.