ECRMC CEO delivers good news to council meeting
EL CENTRO – El Centro Regional Medical Center CEO Dr. Adolphe Edward reiterated the hospital’s need for federal funding Friday morning while addressing a special meeting of the City Council, but beyond that, he delivered several bits of good news.
Two weeks ago, Edward, along with Pioneers Memorial Healthcare District CEO Larry Lewis and California Hospital Association President and CEO Carmela Coyle, participated in a teleconference explaining their support for the House of Representatives’ so-called HEROES Act, which would have infused $100 billion to help hospitals and healthcare providers recover from their huge revenue losses during the pandemic.
In ECRMC’s case, at last report, lost revenues were running about $6 million per month, not to mention expenditures made to accommodate COVID-19 patients. Edward indicated Friday he didn’t care how they went about it, but he wants the federal government to work out a funding solution for healthcare. “Without the federal funding … we are going to miss the opportunity to stay open, and that would be a crying shame,” he said.
As for positive news, Edward said the patient census at the hospital as of Friday was at 84, with 35 being treated for COVID, including nine in the intensive care unit. This was a significant improvement over two weeks ago when the hospital was overwhelmed with new COVID patients and had to divert them out of the county.
Edward said the hospital had plenty of supplies and capacity to treat patients. He also said the eight nurses provided by the state Department of Public Health, as well as the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team assigned to the hospital, would remain there at least another two weeks.
He said seven patients had been transferred from ECRMC to the new Federal Medical Station at Imperial Valley College as of Friday. The newly opened facility is intended for COVID patients who are approaching recovery.
Edward also advised the council the hospital now is able to offer the drug Remdesivir in the treatment of COVID patients. The drug is a broad-spectrum antiviral that has been approved for emergency use in the United States. He said the drug has been supplied by the state and is being distributed through the county.
“We’re seeing some recoveries we wouldn’t have had without that medicine,” he said.
Edward dismissed rumors that ECRMC is misclassifying patients as COVID-positive in order to secure additional CARES Act funding. For one thing, he said, falsifying such records would come at the risk of the hospital losing its license and being shut down. “That’s how serious it is,” he said.
For another thing, the hospital is ethically bound to assign codes appropriately. “We do not mix codes for grins and giggles,” he said, adding the consequence would “probably be me getting arrested and me going to jail. … I look very badly in orange.”