The focus initially will be on Anchorage as hundreds of medical personnel begin coming to Alaska to assist the state’s overburdened healthcare facilities. Nearly 300 registered nurses and more than 100 certified nursing assistants or patient care technicians are among the healthcare workers that are expected to assist and support Alaska’s healthcare system.
Bruce Richards, Central Peninsula Hospital’s External Affairs Director said that CPH requested aid from the incoming medical personnel:
“So we did put in for some of those workers that are coming to Alaska. I believe there was 15 nurses, about 10 certified nurse assistants and respiratory therapists, I believe were the numbers that we put in. I have no idea if we’ll get them or not, but that’s what we requested.”
Richards says that Central Peninsula Hospital still stands to benefit with the most critical patients potentially being able to go to Anchorage, now that there will be more personnel:
“All of the hospitals in Anchorage, the tertiary care centers up there, Anchorage Regional, Providence, ANMC, all of those places take patients from outer lying areas including Central Peninsula Hospital and being as taxed as they’ve been, we have not been able to send more critical, higher acuity patients to them. Getting them staffed up and able to deal with patients is really going to help the outer lying hospitals. The smaller hospitals will be able to send more critical patients to them.”
The hospital is at 110% capacity today, according to Richards:
“We have 17 COVID patients. It’s dropped down a little bit. We did have a COVID death this week, but it seems to be, we didn’t have any new COVID admits yesterday, which was good.”
Adam Crum, Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, told KSRM that Central Peninsula Hospital has an allocation of staff coming down, but the initial wave of incoming staff would be in medical facilities across Anchorage and the Mat-Su Borough due to the greater staffing capacity and the potential for more beds to open up.
