OAHHS Hospital Voice Fall/Winter 2020

13 Fall/Winter 2020 When an employee or patient tests positive for COVID-19, Asante has well-established processes to stop the spread of infection. “The July case was already contained before we knew we had an outbreak,” said Dr. Frost. “The effectiveness of our processes was proven by the fact that everyone we tested, about 200 employees, all came back negative.” Asante’s contact tracing efforts were just one part of the overall COVID response. The system’s chief medical officer said Asante acted early to set up testing sites with local public health partnerships. “We decided that testing was critical to keeping our community safe,” said Dr. Jamie Grebosky. “One of the most helpful things we did was in the first week of March, and late February, we pulled up a community site. We were the first mobile testing site in the state.” Asante also set up a community-based triage line, which was free and open to everyone in the area. The site immedi- ately began receiving thousands of calls a day. Dr. Grebosky says he’s convinced that these and other steps have helped deliver a very low COVID prevalence in the Rogue Valley. With demand for surgeries returning, Dr. Frost is back in the operating room while continuing to oversee Asante’s contact tracing team. “I’m proud of how hard our employees have worked in response to COVID, coming to work and putting their lives at risk,” said Dr. Frost. “That’s not something they’ve done before. They’re doing it out of respect for our community.” “We want to take care of our commu- nity and are honoring that commit- Early mobile COVID test site, Jackson County ment, while at the same time, we’re dealing with our own fears and uncertainties. Most days you want things to be normal again, but then you know you’ve got to buckle down and treat it like the problem it is.” Dr. Grebosky is still optimistic that southern Oregon and the whole state can contain COVID and begin a return to normalcy. “We can do this,” he said. “We need to pull together as a team.”