Umatira clinics are responding to the COVID-19 crisis with an innovative lamprey freezer

The Oregon Newsroom has partnered to share content that highlights the human impact of the 2010 pandemic. Our hope is that this collaboration will capture this historic nature of the COVID-19 crisis.This article was contributed by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Last Monday afternoon, a pickup truck rolled into the parking lot behind the Yellow Hawk Tribal Health Center on the Umati Indian Reservation. Nurse Lena Wickert grabbed the clipboard and three cotton swabs and tested each person in the car. Coronavirus.

After Wickart wiped his six nostrils, the truck driver shook goodbye and Wickart returned to the clinic. Another nurse gathered cotton swabs and walked about 10 steps down the hallway to the laboratory. In the laboratory, test results were obtained from a box-shaped electronic device.

It will take 15 minutes for the results to be returned. If positive, contact tracing will begin.

“This is not possible in hospital or emergency room situations,” said Stephen Merrill, a Yellowhawk lab manager and infection control manager.

Local clinics and medical facilities such as Yellowhawk are important to control the spread of COVID-19. They often stand between sick patients and hospitals, especially in rural areas.

According to Merrill, the speed and accessibility of nearby clinics are key to stopping the virus early, long before the patient becomes ill enough to require emergency service.

“The clinic is very important for front-line access to patients,” he said.

Crisis mode

Since the coronavirus arrived at the reservation in June, Yellowhawk has transformed into a COVID-19 Crisis Center for the Allied Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.

Clinics play a unique role in the community health system and its pandemic response.

Yellow Hawk is a member of the Umatilla Tribe and other Native American primary care providers within the service area. It serves indigenous peoples who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 and is surrounded by Umatilla and Union counties in Oregon, where the state’s worst coronavirus outbreak occurred.

The clinic shifts resources and personnel to test, contact trace, and now tribal vaccinations.

In many respects, it is well-positioned to fight viruses by accessing tests and laboratories to analyze results in-house. In other respects, Yellowhawk, like other local clinics and hospitals, works with limited staff and resources, so it always feels like it’s at stake.

“We were overwhelmed,” said Lisa Guzman, CEO of Yellowhawk. “Our clinic is very nervous because we had to require many staff to wear multiple hats.”

Some staff had to reduce their normal duties, if not completely abandoned, to do contact tracing.

In order for the tribes to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, they needed an ultra-low temperature freezer to store them. The tribe used a freezer in its fishery sector to store lamprey specimens for research, but found one that was no longer using it.

“They are like’here we want to be part of the solution,’” said Eric Gabriel, director of facilities and risk management at Yellowhawk. “This affects everyone, so everyone wants to get involved in the solution.”

Currently, the large gray freezer stands by the door of the large-capacity storage room in Yellowhawk, but the word “LAMPREY” still runs sideways.

Scale back

About 8% of clinic tests are back positive. This is higher than the overall Oregon average (5.8%), but much the same in the tribal Indian Health Services region (8.3%) and lower than Umatilla (13.1%) and Union (10.4%) counties. I am.

As the number of cases surges, hospitals are filling up across the state, putting pressure on local health systems. These hospitals are the last line of defense against the worst case of COVID-19, which is why health authorities are closely monitoring their number of beds. If it occurs anywhere, hospitals in any region can be overtaken.

Small hospitals like CHI St. Anthony in Pendleton, west of the appointment, have a shortage of beds or resources to treat very ill patients, Bend, Portland, and even It relies on transfers to large hospitals in cities such as Seattle.

“If all of these hospitals are full and can’t accept transfers, we’re stuck because we don’t have a better period,” said Emily Smith, director of marketing and communications at CHI St. Anthony.

According to Smith, small clinics play an important role in confronting COVID-19. These help maintain the health of the community and directly reduce the pandemic burden on the hospital through testing and contact tracing.

Yellow Hawk moved to a new facility in 2018 to offer a powerful product set. Tribal members come there under one culturally sensitive roof, from primary care to dentistry, behavioral health to pharmacies. The clinic also provides transportation to treatments and professional services that cannot be provided.

“Patients and communities use Yellow Hawk for everything for their health,” Gabriel said.

However, achieving a relatively low coronavirus count meant reducing much of what the clinic offers. It saves time. Optometry is closed and dentistry only accepts urgent appointments. Transport is mostly on hold.

“Our community members who come to us on a regular basis must be very frustrated as they are trying to come in for a promise, they are trying to follow their ongoing care “Guzman said.

“Yellow Hawk needs to work to find a balance between providing daily surgical care to the community and building a brand new COVID clinic to support the community.”

Guzman said the tribe was afraid that it would not be able to meet many of the health goals set earlier this year for the chronic illnesses prevalent in appointments.

Current goals for Yellowhawk and healthcare facilities everywhere remain open and operational while the vaccine is being deployed to the masses.

The start of vaccination faces relief and excitement (and questions) around the world, including Yellow Hawk. Corridors and lamprey freezers are humming with news of their imminent arrival.