FAHC Gets Face-Time with H1N1 virus

As of today, FAHC is currently treating at least one confirmed case of H1N1 flu. For anyone who just returned from Mars, the U.S. is suffering from an N1H1 pandemic or as FAHC refers to deadly pandemics: “the expected outbreak of flu this fall.”

With months to prepare, you would think that FAHC would be ready for its H1N1 patients.  You’d be wrong. Let’s just say they are off to a really bad start.  

One of the most basic precautions – as basic to H1N1 as, say, fill up the tank and put the key in the ignition is to driving a car – is to stalk up on masks.  Heck, even the hospital’s website says people entering rooms of H1N1 patients need to wear masks, gowns and gloves.  The mask required for an infectious disease such as H1N1 is the N95 mask.

All healthcare personnel who enter the rooms of patients in isolation with confirmed, suspected, or probable novel H1N1 influenza should wear a fit-tested disposable N95 respirator or better. Respiratory protection should be donned when entering a patient’s room.

True to this basic requirement, FAHC does require that health care workers and those dealing with the H1N1 virus must don an N95 mask. Problem is,FAHC is not so concerned about whether its health care workers are wearing a sterile N95 face mask before entering or after leaving isolation areas with H1N1 flu patients are kept.

Is FAHC experiencing a Katrina moment? We all remember when George Bush complained that no one could ever predict that a big hurricane might strike and the levies in New Orleans might breach. With months of predictions about the scope of the N1H1 pandemic, is FAHC prepared? Melinda “Mindy” Estes, CEO and her prescient infectious disease administrators seem to be blissfully unaware of what is hitting FAHC right now. And the problem is not a lack of resources, lack of beds (yet) lack of technical skill.  This is sheer incompetence by FAHC administrators who are cutting corners by ignoring the well documented safety needs of the community.

Does someone need to tell the CEO and her crackerjack staff what happens when the airborne H1N1 virus starts floating around the family members, patients, staff, patients, health care providers and anyone else unlucky enough to be standing around when the Doctor McSwine says “hey, hold this mask for me until I get back from lunch, I’ll need it again for this afternoon’s rounds.”

There’s more . . .

FAHC has a few of these N95 masks.  

Health care workers who are treating N1H1 patients are being fitted with “a” mask and that is the problem. FAHC isn’t prepared, as of October 5, 2009, to supply its workers with sufficient N95 masks.  

FAHC administrators were apparently on the ball enough to realize they needed to order the masks, which physicians, nurses and other health care officials warned them were critical. Unfortunately, no one responsible for patient, staff and community safety bothered to read the directions and make provisions so that enough masks would be available to the health care workers treating H1N1.

Because of this shortage, health care workers are being told by the FAHC administration that they can’t throw their disposable masks away because “there may not be another one to replace it” and they need to “reuse” the contaminated masks that they have already worn.

You read that correctly. Health care workers who are treating H1N1 flu in an isolation area of the hospital are specifically being told by the FAHC administration to “reuse” disposable masks. Feel safer?

So to recap, the U.S. is in the midst of the most widely publicized pandemic in U.S. history.  Luckily for Vermont, our State is late in the game receiving confirmed cases of the deadly N1H1 disease, and luckily for Vermonters, its hospitals had MONTHS to prepare. So why does FAHC not even have basic masks needed to treat N1H1 patients and to protect the public and its medical care staff? Anyone?  Anyone?  Mindy? Bueller? Anyone?  .  .  . .

Is this type of “Flu, what flu?” awareness by Mindy Estes’ crackerjack flu team any indication of what is in store for N1H1 patients at FAHC as Vermont moves from the outskirts of the pandemic into the mainstream?   Let’s hope not.