TASK FORCE reviews Little Rock’s options.

Jacksonville site purchase sought

A task force of medical leaders in Little Rock is weighing options for expanding the area’s collective capacity to treat patients, with dozens of cases of covid-19 in Arkansas and the expected peak in the state still weeks away.

Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said at Tuesday’s task force meeting that he was negotiating the price of buying the North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville, which closed its emergency room last summer and shifted the facility’s focus to geriatric psychiatric treatment. The building has 90 beds available, he said.

“It wouldn’t take long to get up to speed there,” Scott said.

Since the facility’s owners are based in another state, Scott said, negotiations will take some time.

The possibility of restoring Baptist Health’s shuttered southwest Little Rock campus also has been raised at task force meetings.

“We’ve got contractors who are ready to get it back up to speed for a health care facility,” Scott said.

The mayor also mentioned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it will soon release guidelines for how to equip hotels to serve as impromptu hospitals, but he said he felt existing medical facilities should be used before hotels are converted.

Dr. Amanda Novack, a Baptist Health infectious disease specialist, added that there are several facilities in Arkansas that mainly do elective procedures, and those facilities could be converted for emergency use.

“If you give me some of those names, I’ll personally call some of those folks,” Scott said.

Task force chair and atlarge City Director Dr. Dean Kumpuris said two types of facilities will be needed: one for sick people who need to be sequestered, and another for critically ill people who need respirators.

“If we don’t start looking now, then we’re going to be in big trouble,” he said.

Dr. Stephen Mette, chief executive officer of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said central Arkansas needs to understand what its resources are and have a master plan for the worst-case scenario.

“I get really scared when I look at what’s happening in New York City and Seattle, where there’s just not enough capacity,” Mette said. “It worries me that we have not as a region or as a city come together to figure out how we would distribute. … I don’t like what I see for our own hospital. I do think that we could easily be overwhelmed for our critical care capacity.”

Kumpuris said health care leaders in the area will likely be forced to have a more regional mindset soon.

“My assumption is that in three weeks when all this really hits, it’s not going to be your hospital or your hospital, it’s going to be this

region’s hospital,” he said.

Dr. Gerry Jones, chief medical officer at CHI St. Vincent, said it would be beneficial for the community to set up a single donation site for masks and other supplies and make them available to whatever health care facility or emergency medical service needs them, based on how many they need.

City Manager Bruce Moore said a potential site could be the Little Rock Fire Department training facility at 7000 Murray Street.

The task force is also considering coordinating with the Little Rock School District to provide child care for hospital workers. Child care presents a challenge when schools have closed to keep children separated to stem the pandemic’s spread.

Little Rock School District Superintendent Mike Poore said he is talking to hospitals and offering suggestions of district campuses near hospitals that could serve as sites.

“It is an opportunity, but it has to be done quickly and well,” Kumpuris said.

Novack agreed that any child-care effort needed to be done with caution.

“There’s a reason schools are closed, because in a pandemic that’s a huge source of cross-infectivity,” she said. “I think as we go forward, we just need to be as smart as possible.”

Novack said the ideal childcare situation in the time of covid-19 would be a “pod” with one caretaker and just a few children.

Additionally, the task force scrapped an idea of having a centralized telephone number that people can call to be screened for the illness.

“We’ll promote all of the main numbers,” City Manager Bruce Moore said, referring to the phone numbers that UAMS Medical Center and the Arkansas Department of Health are asking people to call.

Kumpuris asked each hospital leader to bring the “surge plan” for their system when the task force meets again at 4 p.m. Friday. The meetings are taking place in the Robinson Center’s William Grant Still Ballroom to try to ensure a safe amount of space can be maintained among attendees, per guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Members of the public are encouraged to watch the live stream at littlerock.gov or on the city’s YouTube channel.