ALC-Hospital and Medicaid Study Subcommittee
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Troy Wells
Unverified
0:00
Okay, members, if we can just go ahead and find us a seat, and we'll get started in about a minute.
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:00
All right, members, if you're in the back, if you could just come and join us and we're We're going to go ahead and start this meeting.
Speaker 9
1:57
Members, I have one o'clock, so I'm going to go ahead
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
2:35
and call this meeting. Good afternoon, everyone. We have the Legislative Council Hospital of Medicaid Subcommittee.
I am your Chair, Representative Frederick Love. My co-chair will possibly not be here on the Senate end, so Senator Rice, I'll have you act in on the Senate side. All right. Today we're going to have a discussion. Basically, I will tell you in the outline of the discussion, it's going to regard COVID and some of the responses of not only what the state is doing, but what some of our local hospitals are doing and different things that, you know, a very informational session.
So we're going to start with Dr. Jennifer Dillahay. Dr. Dillahay, if you would announce
Speaker 15
3:33
yourself for the record, and you'll be recognized.
Speaker 16
3:35
Thank you, Representative Love. I'm Dr. Jennifer Dillahay. I'm state epidemiologist and medical director for the immunization outbreak
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
3:43
response at the Arkansas Department of Health. Okay. Dr.
Speaker 16
3:47
Dillahay, you're recognized to give your testimony. Thank you. So today we find ourselves in Arkansas having had more than 191,000 cases of COVID-19.
Currently, there are close to 21,000 active cases, and we've had more than 3,000 deaths. Right now, we have at least 1,079 cases that have been admitted to the hospital. and 184 of those as of yesterday were on the ventilator so we find ourselves in a situation where we have an increasing number of cases and so we're very pleased that we now have vaccine
in arkansas the first doses of vaccine made by pfizer biotech were arrived in arkansas on monday Additional doses arrived Tuesday and Thursday at various locations. Our initial strategy for vaccinating in Arkansas is to focus on the high-risk workers in hospitals in order to help support hospital capacity for the patients who are admitted
and to prevent hospital workers from getting COVID-19 and not being available for work. We deployed vaccines to all of the acute care hospitals in Arkansas. The vaccine that is made by Pfizer-BioNTech is a little challenging to work with. It requires storage at minus 70 degrees centigrade, which most facilities prior to this recent epidemic have not had.
Many of them have acquired freezers that can maintain that ultra-low cold temperature. In addition, it's a challenge working with the vaccine because the minimum order that you can get is 975 doses. so smaller facilities would not be able to handle that many doses if they had this appropriate storage so the larger hospitals got direct shipments of the vaccine and the smaller hospitals received allocations of some doses of the vaccine through five different pharmacies that had agreed
to work with assigned hospitals to bring the vaccine to them the hospitals can either take custody of the vaccine and vaccinate their own employees or those pharmacies are available to do vaccination for the smaller hospitals if they choose obviously with the limited number of doses we got was just a little over 25,000 doses. That's not enough to vaccinate all of the high-risk
hospital workers. So hospitals have had to prioritize which workers would be vaccinated first. And then as additional allocations of vaccine are made available, then they can vaccinate additional workers as they receive additional shipments. A second vaccine may be available in Arkansas this next week. The FDA is meeting today, the advisory committee for them is meeting today, so it's possible the FDA may approve that vaccine tomorrow for an emergency
use authorization. This vaccine is called Moderna vaccine, and it is a little easier to work with. it will it only requires freezing at minus 20 degrees which is the usual temperatures that we use for freezing other vaccines that must be frozen like the measles mumps rubella vaccine or the chickenpox vaccine and in addition the minimum order for a moderna vaccine is 100 doses
so it's easier to deploy in smaller settings our initial allocation we anticipate may arrive next week and the long-term care facilities their residents and workers will be the focus of the initial allocation of doses then as hospitals and the long-term care facilities are vaccinated and additional allocations are made available to arkansas the allocations will be provided to
certain community pharmacies around the state that will receive the vaccine and maintain it and they will offer it to health care workers in their communities who don't work for hospitals or long-term care facilities so we hope that that vaccine will be made available in the next few weeks to community health care workers. In addition we are working to make plans to vaccinate
our EMS workers who are involved in direct patient care. Many of them are in ambulances transporting patients at high risk for infection for themselves from sick patients so we are making plans to vaccinate those in the next allocation so i will stop now and see if there's any questions thank
Troy Wells
Unverified
9:36
to start off with some questions and then i'll recognize
the other members now dr dr
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
9:42
dilla hay the initial round of doses the Pfizer i guess that was the you said it comes in 975 but how many doses altogether did we did
Speaker 22
9:55
we receive a little bit more than uh 25 000 we received
Speaker 16
10:00
uh um i think 26 trays of 975 doses total in the state okay now are
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
10:09
we going to be receiving any more of the Pfizer
Speaker 16
10:12
yes so beginning next week we
anticipate that we will be receiving regular allocations of the vaccine likely every week but the amount that will be allocated every week will be smaller than the 25,000. Okay now also is the
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
10:31
health department coordinating all I mean even if the hospitals get that direct shipment i mean how is that how is that coordinated so the
Speaker 16
10:43
hospital immunization i mean the health
department immunization program coordinates the allocation and that's the role that we have played with other vaccines in arkansas in collaboration with the cdc so the the state receives a certain number of vaccines allocated to us it's based on it's a pro rata allocation based on population and we're informed how many doses they are and then we manage the doses in collaboration with
the partner or our external partners the pharmacies and the clinics and the hospitals to get them doses and make sure that it's equitably distributed as well as prioritized in a way that follows the advisory committee on immunization practices recommendations for priority and and
Speaker 28
11:41
collaboration with the governor as well okay and then
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
11:46
i guess my one
of my last questions is the moderna vaccination um once you once i
Speaker 31
11:56
guess the approval is made for those will they come in at
Speaker 16
12:02
the same allocation approximately so the initial allocation is going to be much larger than the subsequent allocations we anticipate will receive a little more than 51,000 doses with the initial allocation and that should be enough to go a long ways to covering the
long-term care facility residents and workers in Arkansas. And by long-term care, I mean skilled nursing facilities like nursing homes, intermediate care facilities, as well as assisted living. It may not quite be enough to cover them all, and then we can finish that with the next
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
12:42
allocation. Okay, so when we begin to talk about vaccination for, I guess, the general population as far as like, I guess we're going to turn toward the elderly or when would you, when would,
when do you suspect that the general population, that the vaccination will be
Speaker 16
13:04
available to the general population? So as it currently stands, we have three different priority groups for the time when we have limited doses, while additional vaccines will be approved, hopefully, and production will be increased. So in this time when we have limited doses, we have three
different groups. 1A is currently the healthcare workers and long-term care residents. then there's 1B and 1C. Currently 1B focuses on essential workers and 1C focuses on persons who are increased risk for severe disease such as persons adults of any age who have chronic health conditions or are 65 and older as well as those who live in chronic or who live in congregate
settings but both 1b and 1c are in a sense draft because the acip has not yet made final recommendations as to who should be in those priority groups so we are waiting for that but we don't want to wait to start planning until they vote so we have tentative plans then once they vote which we believe will be this weekend and they'll make a decision then we will adjust those plans and follow those recommendations okay all
Speaker 31
14:41
right thank you um we're going to go
to seat number 46 i think that is
Speaker 37
14:49
representative sullivan thank you mr chair you know i asked a while back for the department of health to send me information on why we limit our closing our restaurants at 11 and i got several pages back they cited studies in switzerland wisconsin artificial intelligence and several other locations not close by but when I look on the CDC website and I look at deaths per thousand cases per thousand workplaces per thousand
transmission by retail per thousand and home stay-at-home orders the states that have are less restrictive have better outcomes than we do you know florida for example and death is a well they all are florida texas missouri and arkansas kind of trails and all of those even though we are more restrictive so they have fewer restrictions and have lower rates and all those categories and when i look at the research that was sent to me we seem to to cite you know we cite the
california model and the chicago model as what we are following who have very high rates if we're looking for good outcomes why wouldn't we be modeling the places that have good outcomes rather than modeling places and locations that have worse
Speaker 16
16:17
outcomes so the intent of the restrictions is to reduce gatherings where the transmission is like i understand that but you know i'm
Speaker 42
16:27
sorry to interrupt that wasn't the question okay you know we are if we want good
outcomes it seems like we would be looking at locations that have good outcomes these people are ahead of us here what are they doing these people are doing better
Speaker 37
16:46
what are we doing so when you look at actual deaths and actual cases per thousand and actual workplaces transmission and retail transmission,
Speaker 42
16:56
several states are doing better than we. But when I get the research, we're doing artificial intelligence. We're looking at California and Chicago. Why don't
we be following models that have better outcomes than we instead of just following studies? Well, it
Speaker 16
17:15
would not be appropriate for us to follow models in states that have less transmission when we already have high rates of transmission. We would like to follow models in states with high transmission to learn what they do and what is effective in those states. So we are already at a place where we have high rates of transmission.
Using strategies that work in areas where they have lower transmission would not necessarily help us. Okay, so what you're
Speaker 42
17:43
saying then is places like Florida and Missouri and Texas have always been low. therefore we don't follow them but we want to follow people that are high and remain high we want
Speaker 16
17:56
to learn from states that have had high transmission to see what they do in order to reduce their transmissions i guess
Speaker 42
18:06
so florida was never higher than us and they were i mean what
what what in your in this analysis this all comes from the cdc this is what they're saying so So, I guess, would you be indicating that those states, Florida, they weren't high and went down? Because that's what happened to them. They had high transmission rates, and they have lowered theirs. It seems like we would be looking at what people that are doing that lowered theirs, which is an example in Missouri and Florida and Texas, they lowered theirs by doing these things.
They didn't raise them. okay um also you know we look at uh the inspections that are going on well as a matter of fact the recent new york study said that only 1.4 percent of new cases were traced to restaurants are you familiar with that study no sir i
Speaker 47
19:06
have not looked specifically at that study okay
Speaker 42
19:09
and um And the other thing, it mentions here that one size doesn't fit all.
And one of the things that some states are doing, for restaurants particularly, they're not treating them all the same. So if a restaurant has 60% of their revenue from food, they're not treated the same way that a bar that's open at night, late, with a small bar, they don't treat them the same. so that just like we now you apply to the governor's office or the department of health you make an application if you want to have a gathering why aren't we taking a allowing
businesses to do something similar in other words you might have a five-star restaurant that makes 80 percent of its revenue off of its food and a bar that makes 95 percent of its revenue off of alcohol but we're treating them all the same and closing
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
20:12
at 11 why would we do that so
Speaker 16
20:15
the idea is to reduce gatherings and that is what we're attempting to do with the reduction
and the open the reduction or the limitation in those gatherings staying open that's that's on the first statement
Speaker 42
20:28
here i get that i understand is to do that but it seems like there are other options the option just isn't a matter of fact in here it says it that one size fits all isn't a good strategy so when we say one size doesn't fit all is not a good strategy but then we employ that strategy even when the transmission rate is really low and the businesses operate completely
differently and then we have a model that if people want to gather you know more than whatever the number is now 10 or 100 I don't forget I forget where it's at but we're going to let people have gatherings that are approved it seems like we would allow businesses to have a business model we heard testimony a week or so ago that these guys change their ventilation systems they wash their hands x they do everything that's out there and they're a restaurant probably I'm going to guess making 70 to 80 percent of their revenue off of food but they're treated the same way as a
bar would and the study says you know people drunks can't control themselves essentially and they they break the rules but in some of these family restaurants it's just not true yet we still don't offer them an opportunity that we do the general public to make application and i guess what i'm asking is would you would the health department consider looking at that and giving restaurants and bars an option of some sorts that is something we could look at thank you
Speaker 55
22:02
let it go all right i'm going to allow you the latitude of one more question all right
Speaker 37
22:07
go ahead all right today i was at a large big box store and
Speaker 42
22:11
stood in line for probably 15 minutes uh waiting with a bunch of other people but we're not inspecting those locations why is it that we're not and i've seen that the report that we're going in expecting those paced places but we don't uh inspect big box stores where some of that same things happen
people are handling things how come we don't
Speaker 15
22:35
do that that may be a good idea and i know we're
Speaker 16
22:39
doing a kind of a compliance blitz right now for locations that are not typically regulated by the health department like restaurants things we don't license so that would be we'll take that into consideration but you're going into a lot of places that are not licensed by
Speaker 37
22:54
the health department right now yes for the blitz sorry
Speaker 59
23:02
all right thank you thank you i appreciate it sure seat number who's in seat number
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
23:08
83 okay hammer senator hammer you're recognized commission
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
23:11
thank you mr chair dr dillah hey i was wondering whenever it is that
all the nursing home residents have received the vaccination and the employees will that be a time that we could consider opening up the nursing homes so that their loved ones could go in and visit them if they've received that vaccination? I think that
will allow us some opportunity to have more flexibility. It
Speaker 16
23:38
may not be immediate because one thing we don't know about the vaccinations is if people are vaccinated and it protects them from illness, does it keep them from being carriers and transmitting the virus? So we want to have a better idea about that and we are hopeful that the workers as well as the family
members who might visit the long-term care facilities would also be vaccinated when there's enough vaccine available for them that would go a long way toward protecting our vulnerable
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
24:22
vaccine is effective and i have no doubt it is um if the vaccine is effective should
they not be protected against somebody that would be a carrier who
might actually have it and come in the nursing home but they would be protected because
they got the vaccine though that would be true but one of our concerns
Speaker 16
24:50
right now about the older adults is there were not nursing home patients included in the trials so we don't know if frail older adults respond robustly to the vaccine as a healthy older adult so it is our hope that they will and their indications are are that it would at least protect them more than no vaccine but we
don't know exactly how protective the vaccines will be for that population group and if you've already had
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
25:25
the uh if you've already had the um i lost my word if you already got it um um you're still it is still a good idea to go ahead and
get the vaccine even though you've already had it that is true we know that the
Speaker 16
25:45
natural infection with COVID-19 is not likely
to develop uh cause the development of long-term uh protection whereas the vaccine is likely to do that so it would be an advantage to people to get vaccinated even if they've been
Speaker 28
25:59
diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past and is this do we know if this vaccine
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
26:06
is going to be a one and done or will this be an annual thing that we're going to look at having to get every get
Speaker 16
26:18
a seasonal shot so we do not know yet for the vaccine that's been authorized or the Moderna vaccine
how long the protection stimulated by the vaccine will endure. We believe it will be longer than a flu shot, and one reason we need flu shots every year is that the flu viruses mutate rapidly. The coronavirus does mutate some, but not as rapidly as a flu shot, so it's likely that the protection from the vaccine will not need to be annual, but we'll have to look down the road to see if
Speaker 28
26:56
at some time in the future a booster dose would
Speaker 31
27:00
be recommended okay thank you thank you mr chair seat number 49 i believe that is senator rice you're
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
27:10
recognized thank you mr chair thank you for being here dr delahe and let me say this I talk to a lot of people and we come at things from different point of views but the people I talk to realize the strain that the health department and others
have had in working to protect the health of Arkansas and we do thank you for that if I miss this and a question I got distracted out of somebody I had to send a text back to you right now uh what is the directive of the arkansas health department after people are vaccinated regarding mask requirements uh and spacing what what is that going to be for those
that have received the vaccine is there a second
Speaker 16
28:09
vaccine they have to take 21 days after yes so Most of the vaccines that are being developed for COVID-19 are two-dose series. The Pfizer vaccine that's currently available requires two doses, a minimum of 21 days apart, to provide full protection. At this time, there will be no recommendation to change masking or social distancing.
we're wanting to learn more about whether the vaccine will keep someone from being a carrier and shedding the virus that others can get before we would make a recommendation that to change the current masking and social distancing
Speaker 15
28:57
guidelines we're the after the second dose
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
29:04
okay you you said we continue such as myself that that had
a mild case i don't want it again uh of the virus and restricted myself to 10 days and there are people that can my understanding there's people that can be positive for up to maybe even 90 days after
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
29:34
that. Is that correct? So for people like yourself that had mild to moderate disease didn't
Speaker 16
29:40
need to be in the hospital. It's been shown that live virus cannot be cultured
from those people after about 10 days. But if they were to receive a PCR test, that PCR test is so sensitive it may give a false positive result because that person may still have viral debris in their nasal area that the test would pick up on so we don't recommend that people get subsequent pcr tests to see if they're negative because it doesn't really help with clinical
decisions a person such as yourself could come out of isolation after 10 days and i don't know if
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
30:25
it's part of your policy i i had questioned the health department after that i said why didn't you tell me that in fact i paid for two tests after that and was told before i took them that you know this you can test for weeks or months right so i knew that but because of my family and because of my business and because of just being around anybody i wanted to know i continue
to wear a mask and protect let me switch over to uh are is is the health department going to do or are they doing follow-ups with people after these new vaccinations what kind of follow-ups do do you
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
31:09
contract again. I guess they're just going for testing. You know, then are for side effects or whatever, you know, as, as, as much as out there in the
media, we want people to have confidence in the vaccines and, and understand because there can be, I was talking to somebody that had, I don't know, it was pneumonia shot or something. They give two pneumonia shots. The shingle shots, probably the one. This wasn't pneumonia. I didn't think. It was something that had gotten a second shot and they didn't have any trouble with the first one. It wasn't COVID, but they'd had a second
shot and they were having some back trouble anyway, but they were really having some back trouble. I mean, that stuff happens. So what I'm
wondering is, are you monitoring that as a health aspect to know what we're dealing with in that if there's you know a small percentage of anything having something is that just something you monitor or we're just got a volume of people right now
we've got to deal with and we're just doing it
Speaker 16
32:17
on the front end hope for the best no we do pay attention in a couple of ways well first of all the pfizer vaccine that's currently available is fairly reactogenic is how we call
it so when people get the vaccine they may have a sore arm pain at the site where they got vaccinated maybe swelling and redness but they could also have systemic symptoms fever feeling tired headache and just general malaise so people should be informed of that before they get vaccinated and to help inform people we provide them with a fact sheet that the FDA has made
available and everyone is required who gives vaccines to give this fact sheet to people who get vaccinated so they have the opportunity to review it and make an informed decision before they get vaccinated so that will help them know about what to expect in addition people who have more severe reactions they can report them to a federal system that we monitor in Arkansas for
our residents called the vaccine adverse event reporting system or we call it VAERS for short and there's information in that fact sheet about how to report it anyone can report they can report for themselves or a health care provider can report on their behalf or a family member can report. So when we learn about those more severe reactions to the vaccine, then we will track
those. It gets tracked also by the FDA and the CDC. In addition, when people are getting vaccinated we are providing them with a information about how to enroll in a program called v-safe it's a smartphone app if they're willing to do it they can download it and enter their information about what happens after they get that vaccine do they get a sore arm does nothing
happen or do they have a fever or those kinds of things
Speaker 18
34:41
and then that app will also provide them with the reminder for when their second dose is due. So there are several ways that we're working to make sure that that kind of information is tracked, both with our federal partners as well as monitoring it and following it from the data that the federal partners collect. We don't have a separate system, but we follow for Arkansas. Okay,
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
35:09
part of it and I've had in our county that I know of that's what it says on the website three people that have passed two were I consider friends and one was a close relative to my wife in
good health at 68 so I don't minimize this at all seriously. On the regulatory part to make you aware, and I don't, you may not be the one in the health department,
but I did make the health department contact through governmental sources aware. Last Friday, I had a health department person come in to a furniture store, 20,000 square feet. We've had signs on the door since this started because just my employees wanted to be safe. I think before the signs were mandated, we put two people per car. Most people do that, you know, keeps them bringing eight kids in with them, but they leave them at home, I guess.
But sometimes, you know, people don't follow, but most times they do. We've worn masks, we've got sanitizer out, we've done everything that's been asked since the first. But we had on a Friday afternoon, when you can't get a hold of anybody normally, an inspector in, and my question to him, what's changed? He gave me a brochure, and I looked at it, and I said, this is what we've been doing since day one. He said, well, you know, the governor said something last week, and COVID numbers are out. I said, what has changed?
I said, do you have something on paper that says something's changed that we need to be doing? And he said, well, that's a good question. And he didn't know that he was going to check on for me. Part of, just a minute, part of the regulatory problem, part of the problem that you're hearing from Senator Lex Sullivan is the people out at the end, y'all are doing the best you can. You're swamped. I understand. But I urged him, I said, y'all have that many extra people to come around to tell me to
keep doing what I'm doing. and first he came in and didn't identify himself to he should have asked for the manager or the owner he started with the girls at the front that's not proper you're going to come in in a regulatory way ask for the manager or the owner we were doing everything if you're going to do it on a Friday afternoon when I can't get a hold of anybody and I start having businesses call me say what's going on
I said I asked what's changed they were doing the restaurants they were doing the eateries if you're going to do everybody communicate with the representatives of the people the ones that's going to get the calls that's not hard to do without email we're going to broaden and start checking more places that's what we're having to deal with that's frustrating these these eateries that serve
or bars or whatever that I'm hearing about. I understand how they may crowd in there and I don't know, I don't go. But I've got
people, hundreds of people through my store every day. And I asked this inspector, I said, have you checked a major box store? No, he said, we've got somebody, I guess in Little Rock that panels that division, because they self-monitor.
He said, I'm going to check when I know the manager. I guess to satisfy me. Most all citizens tell me we're in there in line. They may have spacing, but
we're there. We're packed in there. I don't go. I find places other places. And yet we're targeting and putting people out of business. ruining their lives again i lost a loved one it's serious i wish we had communication
with the health department and that's what we've asked for through our governor to be in the conversation because y'all do a good job at what you do but you don't do what i do and i've done it all my life every penny i've got is invested in it and i know what these people feel like that are saying it go down the drain they want a fighting chance i would welcome communication better than we've had and that's not at you that's all of us that's elected in government and serve government i hope that's
i hope that's not too critical but i hope
Cam Patterson
Unverified
40:08
it's factual well your point is well taken thank you all right thank you for that point senator all right uh members i have about three people left in a queue and we still have about three other guests so if we can we can make it quick I will recognize my friend Senator Stubblefield thank you mr. chairman you're
Speaker 83
40:27
my friend also thank you dr. Dilla hey for
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
40:31
being here today and thank you for all you do do we have any idea in the state of Arkansas how many people
may have had this virus and been asymptomatic didn't know it got over it and yet carry the antibodies for it, do we have any idea what that number might be? Yes, there
Speaker 16
40:50
are studies looking at that, and I'm sorry I don't know those numbers right now, but there are studies
Speaker 28
40:55
being done, and we can get that information for
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
40:59
you. Okay, thank you. Also, do you have any
idea, is the research or the data changed in regard to how long this virus can can live on this on a surface
Speaker 16
41:14
in that area it would appear that environmental contamination is not as prominent as of course droplets and aerosols from people speaking and talking and laughing and singing and so forth um but um i'm so i don't know if
Speaker 15
41:32
there's anything recent that has changed i'm not aware of any so so if someone
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
41:38
who is who is positive
for the virus takes a a
shopping cart and pushes it through a store and some and it's not cleaned and someone else who is not positive gets that same cart that hadn't been cleaned what's the
possibility of that individual contract contracting that disease COVID from that? I don't know that percentage and
Speaker 16
42:02
I will look for it for you. Well the reason I ask you Dr. Delhay is
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
42:07
I took a couple of days about a month month and a half ago and went to a place city where
I live close to where I live
a large city and I spent two days observing big box stores because I was concerned about the number of people that go through these big box stores to start off with. You're talking thousands upon thousands every day. And I watched, and in the beginning, back early in the spring, these large box stores, they had people cleaning the carts, cleaning the freezer doors, and anything else that might be a surface, potential surface that someone would touch. They had them
cleaning those. That no longer happens. I watched people push a cart to the parking lot. They would go out and get the cart, bring it back. Someone else would get it. Now they did provide some sanitizers for people if they wanted to clean it before they used it themselves. Those were there but a lot of people didn't even use those. They just grabbed the cart and none of the doors were cleaned and I spent hours upon hours in the stores with like I said thousands of people. What is the potential i mean we've looked at how this has spread and i've heard it i've heard it blamed on
family gatherings i've heard it blamed on churches some churches have 20 30 congregants a lot of people don't go to church anymore they either they either get it on facebook or they sit in the parking lot and yet uh and also our small businesses and yet somehow these big box stores seem to be playing with a different set of rules than a lot of our small businesses that are struggling and going out of business. Can you address that? Why we don't do a little more in
regard to monitoring and supervising some of these large, and I appreciate what they do. They provide food for and things that we need, but what I'm saying is anybody in this state or in this country that puts food on the table they are essential they're essential to their family they're essential to their livelihood and their future so there's a lot of people that
could fall in the essential category but how do you how do you deal with
Speaker 16
44:38
these big box stores so your point is well taken it's very possible that the virus could spread in those
Speaker 28
44:43
settings and it would be very difficult to identify because a lot of people go there and they go many other places and they get infected and we don't know
Speaker 95
44:54
where they got infected. Okay that brings me
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
44:57
to another point. I have talked to 25 individuals who tested positive for the virus
and asked that I talked a lot more than that but 25 were never contacted by a contact tracer and of the of the dozens of others i spoke with they all said we are not going to tell them who we were in contact with other than our family members because we do not want to cause harm to them or cause them to maybe lose their job or be laid off or put in isolation or they're not telling people who they are coming in contact with so do you really feel like the 150 million
we spent on contact tracing do you feel like
Speaker 28
45:43
that was a good investment i do feel that it was a good investment it's important for us to have that capacity although right now with the high rates of in infections it's difficult to do the case investigation and contact tracing in the way we would like but over time as the rates go down it will become more and more important to help identify sites of spread and help people toward the in the decline of the disease to
Speaker 16
46:15
identify as many cases as possible to be able to better control the disease in the future and those things need to be in place you can't start putting them in place when we get to that point mr chairman i have two more
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
46:34
short questions just two more only if they're short only if they're short okay what dr delhi what percentage of our of our mortality rates
come from long care long care facilities
Speaker 89
46:47
i do not know that percentage off the top of my head but it's
Speaker 59
46:52
available and we can provide it to you okay and i will let the other one
Cam Patterson
Unverified
47:02
go mr chairman thank you all right um seat
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
47:06
21 i think that is representative in it you're recognized thank you thank you mr chair um dr dillahay i have a question um when you had when you list those three um categories one a one b one c um do you think teachers might be in the next round of vaccinations when they
come to the state possibly teachers are at this point in time included in 1b okay they are okay and then my second question is uh after you contract or sorry after you contact after you get the coronavirus sorry uh and i hear people say that they're immune to that can you speak to that can you explain the immunity and is it true and if it is how long is
Speaker 16
47:56
the immunity? Sure. So when people get infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, they do
develop immunity to the virus. You know, obviously, none of us would ever become, well, we would all die if we didn't develop some sort of immunity. The question is, how long does that immunity last? There are other coronaviruses that infect humans that cause the common cold, and we know for those coronaviruses, humans do not develop long-term immunity. It's short-term and people can get those viruses again and again. It appears that the virus that causes COVID-19 also has shortened
immunity and it may vary from person to person depending on how mild or severe their infection is and it may vary from person to person with their own health conditions and personal characteristics so there have been documented cases and more are appearing in the medical literature that shows that people have been infected twice already but right now the disease is new enough that we aren't really sure for most people how long the protection endures
although it's not likely to be long lasting like years so we're monitoring that and
Speaker 18
49:20
trying to learn what we can as time goes on all right thank you
Cam Patterson
Unverified
49:31
representative any one last short question representative dan sullivan thank you mr chair yeah when
Speaker 37
49:37
we look at workplaces we caught we put more restrictions and numbers went down we look at retail the numbers went down but now we're
seeing the impact of families just skyrocket at home infections so does fine do fines help reduce the transmission i'm sorry does ask your question we're looking at we're looking at restricting people at different levels and now that we're seeing a kind of a rise in transmission in homes we also fine businesses for doing things are those fines being successful in reducing the transmission i do not know the answer to that at
Cam Patterson
Unverified
50:21
mr chair all right dr dillah hey we appreciate your time we appreciate the work that you and the arc side department of health are doing and uh you are you are dismissed thank you very much All right. Next on our list, we will have Dr. Cam Patterson from UAMS.
Dr. Patterson, if you recognize yourself for the record. be recognized. My name is Cam
Speaker 106
51:08
Patterson. I'm the Chancellor of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Representative Love and members of the committee. I'm pleased to be here today before you. All right, you're recognized, Dr. Patterson. 2020 has been a challenging year for the state of Arkansas, for all people in the state of Arkansas, and for UAMS as well.
We have diligently worked at UAMS with our partners across the state in health care to help to manage the health consequences of COVID-19. It has impacted our state. It has impacted our economy. It has impacted our schools. It's impacted every single moment of our lives. We have worked diligently at UAMS, and we're deeply appreciative of the support that we have received on behalf of all health care facilities in the state from the legislature
from the governor's office and from the people of the state this is a challenging time for us if you look at uams today we have expanded additional intensive care unit beds we are on level one surge, which means that we are not doing any elective procedures that require an overnight stay so that those beds are freed up. And as of this morning, we had no ICU beds available for anyone who needed them. Now that's a challenge for us, but it's also a challenge for smaller
hospitals who need to transfer acutely ill patients to tertiary and quaternary centers like UAMS. it's a problem that does not just impact uams today uh if you look at our um statistics for today this is the first day that the state of arkansas has had over 3 000 confirmed new pcr confirmed new cases of uh covet 19 that's a record and we have 11 054 icu beds across the state
only 46 of those four percent are unoccupied that's the the lowest percentage of beds available since we've been keeping track of this when the pandemic has started so this is straining the health care system the health care system is not broken yet but it is a challenge and it's going to be a challenge in the foreseeable future now there is good news we talked about the vaccine earlier we received our first allocation of vaccines at uams at 10 10 on tuesday by noon
we were distributing those vaccines we have vaccinated over a thousand uh of our most high risk employees at uams um since tuesday we've had no adverse events no adverse events out of a thousand administrations which i think highlights the the safety of of the vaccine and this suspended animation that we are in is going to continue until we get to 70 of the population getting
vaccinated as of today only about
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
54:26
half of people say that they are willing to be vaccinated and that challenge, that distrust of the vaccination is particularly impactful in minority populations. So we
Speaker 106
54:38
collectively have to do everything that we can to assure people that these vaccines are safe, they benefit you, me, but they benefit the entire state more importantly. That's gonna be a key issue for us.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
54:54
We talked about two vaccines that are one that's available and one that will probably be available next week there are more vaccines coming down the pike we're going to need more uh uams has been running a phase three trial for um a vaccine that is has been produced by jansen uh in fact we only enroll minority populations um at uams into this trial to make sure that the entire population of our state is represented and we can speak to the
safety and efficacy of of the vaccine for every
Speaker 106
55:30
population within the state um uams continues to do the good work that we do we do contact tracing across the state to assist the department of health we've been doing population-based studies and to the question about antibody positivity across the state through data that has been performed by our team members at uams we know that about three and a half percent of the population of the state of arkansas are antibody
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
55:59
positive so that's a long way away from herd immunity but in some populations and especially the latino and african-american populations the positivity rates are much much higher indicating that there are are in underserved populations a lot of unreported cases that we haven't
Speaker 106
56:15
been able to keep track of we're deeply appreciative of the support that we've received we would not be able to continue to do what we do without CARES Act funding. So I want to thank the CARES Act committee of the legislature. We appreciate the federal support that we have received from
the CARES Act as well that has helped us. We deeply appreciate our federal legislators who have been fighting for us in Washington and UAMS has committed to assisting our partners across the state and assisting the people of the state of arkansas as we move into what i hope will be an unwinding phase for covet 19 and and i want to put this in perspective if we do everything that is asked of us collectively as a state we may begin unwinding uh the suspended
animation early in the summer but if we don't do everything
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
57:13
that we do that we need to do and and especially if we don't get to greater than 70% vaccination within our state, this could go on for 18 months more. So the time to spread the word about vaccination is now, and the time to let down our guard with masking social distancing is down the road. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Patterson.
Cam Patterson
Unverified
57:39
And I should have asked Dr. Dilla Hay this, but I wanna ask you, because we're talking about getting to herd immunity over
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
57:46
70 to 80 percent um how many what percentage receives the flu vaccination do you have do you know that percentage right off hand the number of
arkansans that receive their flu vaccination i i do not i can only speak to uams
Speaker 106
58:00
employees and we always have two or three percent of of our employees who refuse to get
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
58:04
the flu vaccine but i can't speak to the entire state and i'm sure the number is much much lower than that okay
Speaker 38
58:12
all right thank you you have one question seat
Speaker 37
58:14
number 46 representative Sullivan thank you Mr. Chair yes um can you help us find maybe Bo might be able to get this what the year over year ICU bed capacity is and where we run I know we're running at the max right now but every flu season I know we run pretty high and if we can get that just over the last three or four years I'd appreciate that we
Speaker 106
58:39
can work with with Bo to get that i know you know
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
58:43
the total number of icu beds that that are being reported is greater than than
Speaker 37
58:47
normal because we've searched and we do some diversion but just kind of a general just what do we look at year over year and i know dr patterson y'all can i appreciate the work y'all do i know how hard it is and senator rice mentioned um we do have a problem with nurses don't we not i mean finding enough of them they're very valuable resource and arkansas is one of the more restrictive states on nurses therefore you train a lot of them who leave the state because to maybe they want to be an entrepreneur and and they leave and we can't keep them here
Speaker 106
59:21
is that an accurate statement that that's a very accurate statement uh and um you know our our problem in managing uh acutely ill COVID-19 patients isn't really the number of beds we have it's the number of people to care for those patients and and um there's no group that we need more of than nurses uh and you know our challenge is that you know in a pandemic we are competing at a national level we have nurses who can can vote with their feet to you know take a
higher paying job in a place that's willing to outbid us and that's an unfortunate situation to be in now i agree with you that there are things that that we need to be thinking about both in the short term and in the long term to increase the the availability and desirability of nurses to work in in the state of arkansas in the short term uh there's commitment by the nursing board for the nurses who graduate in january to get their credentials within 24 hours those are the kinds of things that we can do in the short term but we've got to figure out how we train more
nurses who will stay here in the state we've got to look at ways in which we can use health care providers with less education to offset some of the the menial work that that nurses are forced to be doing and you know we who are hospital administrators have
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:00:46
to create a more nurturing and welcoming environment for nurses we can do a better job and i
Speaker 37
1:00:53
hope the legislature will too and we can get uams and hospital association to get on board with us to
get rid of some of these regulations that cause some of our most highly professional nurses to leave the state you know we have all these scope of practice issues that we really haven't been able to get the hospital association or uams for that matter behind them then we have this occur and we're trying to bring them back just one other question and i appreciate it mr chair if we have a state that has a positivity rate of eight percent and a state that has one of
12 and then 15 and 20 as a researcher which state would you be looking at to model that's going
Speaker 106
1:01:39
to depend on on the question that you want to ask um you know the the what we want to know is how do you take a situation where you have a certain level of positivity and reduce that rate as quickly as possible so to me it's not
you know it's a scientist i'm less interested in what is your rate and i'm more interested in who's done a good job and let's understand well let me
Speaker 114
1:02:11
ask the question differently then because i agree with you so if you have a state that has had a high positivity rate you know straight across the line and you've got a state that had high and went down and now they're one of the lowest in the nation which one would you be studying i i want to understand both
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:02:30
of them because i would want to understand what didn't work and i would want to understand what
Speaker 106
1:02:34
did work i can tell you that you know as i am looking around the country and talking to my here is i'm looking at places like el paso which was overwhelmed and how did they manage that situation i've been on the phone with rick lang who's the c who's my counterpart at ut el paso to try to understand
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:02:52
how they weathered that situation um and you know so yeah just tell me
Speaker 116
1:02:57
particularly then i'll just be straightforward you know florida has a
Cam Patterson
Unverified
1:03:01
very so representative sullivan hold on for a second because i think i i understand what you're getting at i do understand
what you're getting at and so i think this is better served it kind of offline to where you can talk to that's fine
Speaker 112
1:03:14
so i'm happy to i'm happy to do that um uh anytime you want thank
Cam Patterson
Unverified
1:03:18
you all right going back to uh senator stubblefield you're recognized thank you
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:03:22
mr chairman thank you dr for being here uh you you stated a few minutes ago that our herd immunity percentage was three and a half four percent well the antibody
positivity was three and a half four percent antibody positive yes sir how
can we how can we ever know exactly where we are or what percentage
of our heart immunity we have until we have tested for antibody test everyone for antibodies we're never
Speaker 106
1:03:48
going to be able to do that and i don't think that we want to do that if we have a vaccine that's
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:03:54
95 effective then simply knowing that somebody's been vaccinated is probably the most important number okay
how many how many frontline workers do we have in the state
oh i i don't know but i'd probably be a better question for bow to answer i can speak
on behalf of uams but i can't speak on behalf of
Speaker 121
1:04:15
the entire state okay that we had 25 000 vials of covid vaccine right we
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:04:20
we received a little bit over 25 000 doses of of the covid 19 vaccine on tuesday that's the first aliquot to the state right
i i have a number of nurse practitioners who have asked me who are unaffiliated with hospitals and they are wondering when they're going to get their vaccine
because they're treating covid patients as well and uh
Speaker 106
1:04:42
do you have any idea when that might be that would be a better question for dr dillehay um you know I could say that, you know, we will probably have, you know, and I'm just ballparking this, and this is opinion, but I would
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:04:58
say that we're probably going to have enough vaccine available so that all health care providers in the state will have access to the vaccine probably by mid-January. Okay,
Speaker 123
1:05:07
and the next shipment is coming from
Speaker 106
1:05:10
Moderna? Well, we're going to get another shipment from Pfizer next week,
and then we'll probably get a shipment from Moderna as well next week. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Doc.
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
1:05:18
Dr. Patterson, that was the last question. We thank you for being here. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. I would
Speaker 10
1:05:32
like to... You had to hit your button. Go ahead, hit your button. Okay.
Cam Patterson
Unverified
1:05:41
Are we good? All right. And then I would like to go ahead and, Mr. Wells, if you and Mr. Ryle could come up at the same time.
Troy Wells
Unverified
1:05:49
If you could recognize yourself for the record, you all could provide your report. Go ahead, Ms. Wells. Hey, I'm
Speaker 130
1:06:13
alive now. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Troy Wells. I'm the president and CEO of Baptist Health. and I want to thank you for having me here today.
A little bit about Baptist Health. For those of you that do not know, we operate 11 hospitals across the state of Arkansas, nine of which are acute care hospitals, and we span from the Arkansas-Oklahoma border in Fort Smith all the way to the Grand Prairie and Stuttgart and everywhere in between. I don't want to repeat the things that
Speaker 131
1:06:42
Dr. Patterson said related to the state of COVID-19, but I will give you some facts and figures about our health system and then be happy to answer questions before I do that though I do want to also thank you the state the legislature for your support of hospitals and health care
providers in Arkansas it has and continues to make a difference and I appreciate that very very much
Speaker 130
1:07:07
we are seeing new record numbers of COVID-19 patients in our hospitals across the state this week. Today we have 237 COVID-19 positive inpatients in our hospitals. That's a new high for us. 79 of those are in the ICU bed and that means today over 40 percent of all of our ICU capacity is occupied by COVID-19 patient and that's been creeping up over the last few weeks.
57 of those ICU COVID patients are on ventilators which is also a new high for our health system. The good news is when I woke up this morning, we had eight ICU beds available, and that's not normal this time of year, and so we were pleased to have some capacity this morning. We are also still awaiting a shipment of 40 to 50 ventilators that we've ordered that should be coming in this month, should we need them in the future. Since the pandemic began, we've expanded our ICU bed capacity at several of our hospitals and have created additional negative airflow rooms
in almost all of our nine acute care hospitals across the state. By early January, we should have an additional 30 ICU beds open at our Little Rock campus. But as you all have already discussed, staffing is critical. We have a plan for staffing some of those ICU beds, but not all of them at this point. As you've heard before, and y'all just talked about a few minutes ago, critical nursing shortage in Arkansas, it existed long before the pandemic. This has just exacerbated it and I think made people aware in the public of how short we are in nurses in Arkansas, and I hope that as we come out of this, there'll be a
new urgency in investing and growing this part of our critical workforce, and if there are barriers that we can remove to make nursing more attractive in Arkansas, I certainly want to be a part of making that happen. We have 352 employees who are out of service today due to exposure. Our total workforce at Baptist Health is 11,000, so that's not a huge number of employees relative to our size however if a hundred of those are bedside nurses that is problematic and that has been the case so that that's just put more strain on us i will say though relative to vaccine we did we did
get our vaccine this week and all of our hospitals except one we hope to have that tomorrow we've administered probably close to a thousand vaccines in the last 36 hours and have about 4 000 left to give but i can tell you in walking through our one of our hospitals yesterday something was different and I think it's a sense of hope. As I observe people, their demeanor, the way they talked with one another and interacted and the looks on their faces despite the mask, I had a sense of hope and
so I'm encouraged and I'm optimistic about the days and months ahead that we'll continue to make some progress despite the dark days we're in right now. From a therapeutic standpoint, we are using the monoclonal antibodies at multiple sites around the state. We've administered over 100 patients that drug so far, and it's doing very well. And yesterday, we had over 100 vials of remdesivir administered to hospital inpatients who are COVID positive. Finally, on the testing front, we test 500 to 600 outpatient tests per day for COVID-19. And again, that continues to be
pretty steady at that level and very high. With that, I will pause and be happy to entertain any questions. Thank you, Mr.
Cam Patterson
Unverified
1:10:29
Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wills. I'll go ahead and take the testimony of Mr. Ryle and then I'll wrap it up with the
Speaker 134
1:10:38
question. Thank you Mr. Chairman I'm Bo Ryle President and CEO of the Arkansas Hospital Association I appreciate the opportunity to be here and thank you for all you're doing in this this pandemic in this time we as Troy and Dr. Patterson have said we certainly appreciate the state cares act money that has been allocated
for hospitals and appreciate that that has come at a much needed time for hospitals so thank you for all your support. You've had a lot of excellent testimony today, so I'll give a few statewide numbers that what we've seen, a report that we do starts at, we look at midnight hospitalizations. That might be a little different than what you're going to see from the health department later today, but just some numbers for you. 1,081 confirmed COVID hospitalizations, 371 confirmed in the ICU 191 confirmed on vents as far as devoted resources 16 percent of occupied
beds with COVID patients 33 percent of occupied adult ICU beds with COVID patients 46 percent events in use by COVID patients and we're certainly seeing a surge throughout the state as you've heard regions central arkansas has 370 hospitalizations this morning and northeast arkansas with 168 so we'll be happy to to answer any questions about those numbers okay i have i have one question but
Speaker 31
1:11:58
i'm gonna go to seat number 83 thank you mr cheryl over here guys to your left
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:12:09
um what is what was the uh bow what was the total capacity of beds available uh for icu patients or did you give
Speaker 134
1:12:21
that a second i did not give that adult icu capacity 1154 and we
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:12:28
have 370 of those occupied occupied with with covid patients yes
so the 370 from the 1154 those beds available or are other icu patients that's correct that's
Speaker 134
1:12:50
other patients through uh regular care okay so if
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:12:55
if we as of right now how many icu beds as of today's data how many icu beds total do we have available as of
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:13:08
and the rest are all taken by covid patients or by um stand or just regular icu patients right
that's correct okay so 40 is a pretty narrow margin to operate on um as a layman i'm just as far as the capacity to expand what capacity did you say we had to expand to right now or what would you do if you got 40 more patients today well hospitals are looking
Speaker 134
1:13:36
at expanding beds i think you heard mr wells say that they're they're adding beds icu beds and hospitals over the last few months have added a number of icu beds and
you heard dr patterson say that that in their surge plan they've stopped some procedures that they see that they need to increase ICU capacity so we've seen in some hospitals say if a surgery or our operation requires an overnight stay a procedure requires an overnight stay then they've stopped those until their ICU numbers are down. Okay and I caught wind of something this past
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:14:08
week and I'll talk kind of vague and you probably know what it is you can fill in the blank but that there was actually a plan approved by CMS for the expansion of beds in non-traditional
hospital settings and understood that maybe got stalled when it got down to arkansas do you know if that's been opened up now or are we taking advantage of the full opportunities out there to open up the number of critical beds that that are available that's
Speaker 131
1:14:38
a great question and yes things are moving here in arkansas uh had a discussion with the task force last week St. Bernard's in Jonesboro has a plan for providing acute hospital care in the home.
Baptist Health, we have a similar plan, an example of a way to think about how to do this. We have a hotel on our Little Rock campus. We shut it down when the pandemic began. We're going to open the hotel back up and provide, use a waiver. The state's assisting us with getting a waiver from CMS to provide home, acute care at home in our hotel. So the hotel, if you will, would be a temporary home for a patient. and we would provide clinical care in that setting end of the day though you can only do that if you got the staff yeah the good news is about care at home is it doesn't require the same level of
staffing as acute inpatient care might so there's some alternative ways we can staff the hotel to provide that level care okay mr chair i'd
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15:33
like to ask some questions about nursing but i'll yield for now or if you okay i'll tell you this
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:15:38
we have to be out of this room by 2 30 so if you have some short questions go ahead and you can go ahead and answer senator hammer you're the only one
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:15:48
in the queue thank you one of the problems and uh we had a meeting down in our neighborhood last week and the ceo of the hospital you know made observation about this and i think it's critical to a hospital
maybe over in hot springs about these uh nursing agencies that are hiring nurses at you know 100 $150 an hour and you know and I mean that's even happening in state where there's some pirating going on in state let alone leaving out of state do you have any suggestions for solutions I know there was a little bit of CARES Act money left I think some of it was allocated to help address that could you just give us y'all's professional opinion about is there anything that we could be doing more than what we're doing to keep our nursing staff in state
Speaker 134
1:16:33
instead of them either switching hospitals or going out of state well I'll start and Troy can add in but certainly economics of this nursing we're in competition with each other and as hospitals we're in competition with other states we're in competition with with travel agencies so the the prices have certainly gone up quite a bit I don't know what we can do to fight with the to bring those prices down the demand is is so is so needed that the prices are high and the competition is as high as it's
ever been so it's it's it's helped the cares act money is going to help the situation and thus compete hospitals are having to to eat those costs
Speaker 133
1:17:15
and compete but that will certainly help the situation but it's a hard it's a hard one to solve I
Speaker 148
1:17:22
would also add that you know the money
Speaker 130
1:17:25
money helps and we want to it's not the money is so much for your existing team as it is
Speaker 131
1:17:30
the recognition and the you know showing them how much you value them uh so so retention using
financial incentives is good uh the the other thing i would say is in the short term you know throughout this whole thing i've just said to my team let's not make it worse let's let's make sure we take really good care of the ones we have even if we can't get 20 more from oklahoma let's take good care of what we have here in arkansas and part of that is making nurses and really all clinicians feel comfortable that when we ask them to do more than they're accustomed to doing that they're going to be protected whether it's from liability reform or otherwise so it's taking good care of the people you have also means ensuring them that we've got their back if we have to get
into crisis staffing mode and have staffing ratios of you know four to one in the ICU their licensure is at risk they're you know from a just a compassion of care standpoint from a nurse's perspective we've got to support them and so anything we can do there to protect them from that
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
1:18:29
perspective is important to me do they have all the liability coverage now in that scenario that's afforded either under the emergency powers or currently in place or are they vulnerable
Speaker 131
1:18:39
i think there's probably some protection and bo may have a perspective on this i think we could potentially do more i think it's important that we also communicate in a way to the nurses so that they hear from even the nursing board or the nursing association that yes we think you've got some protection under these circumstances bo i don't know if you have a thought on that yeah the
Speaker 134
1:19:05
current executive order covers for covid related patients so i think as we move forward it
would certainly be helpful to cover all patient care that's going on in the hospital because we can't separate the covid from the uh in the icu from the patients that are currently there so that's certainly a concern might bring forward some thoughts of legislation on
Cam Patterson
Unverified
1:19:28
that if you want to thank you thank you gentlemen and i do have one question for you uh
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:19:34
mr well so in in receiving the vaccinations and both this question can go for you as well so receiving a vaccination as it
was stated earlier minority populations is it's a little harder in regards to the trusting level are you seeing any of your minority nurses uh refuse the vaccination and if so how how are we dealing with that i have
Speaker 130
1:19:56
not been given any data as of the last 24 hours when we started or 36 hours ago
Speaker 131
1:20:02
i guess we started administering the vaccine on the yes no broken down by age race demographic but i certainly will look into that i will be very interested to see if we have a higher
rate of denial from minority populations i would be interested in
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
1:20:18
seeing that also but in the inverse i would be interested in seeing because if those nurses are taking the vaccination then we could use that as a as um as sort of a sort of a message to the general population that hey this vaccination is safe so absolutely great thought that's kind of what i was
getting at so But with that being said, there is nothing else to hold our attention.
Unknown speaker
1:20:44
I'm going to adjourn this meeting. Thank you so much. Thank you all.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Comments by the Chairs
C. Update on the COVID-19 Pandemic in Arkansas
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — ALC-HOSPITAL AND MEDICAID STUDY SUBCOMMITTEE, Dec 17, 2020 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Troy Wells
Unverified
Representative Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 9
Speaker 15
Speaker 16
Speaker 22
Speaker 28
Speaker 31
Speaker 37
Speaker 42
Speaker 47
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Speaker 56
Speaker 55
Speaker 58
Speaker 59
Speaker 65
Senator Terry Rice
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 75
Cam Patterson
Unverified
Speaker 83
Senator Gary Stubblefield
Unverified
Speaker 89
Speaker 95
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 91
Speaker 106
Speaker 38
Speaker 114
Speaker 116
Speaker 112
Speaker 121
Speaker 123
Speaker 10
Speaker 130
Speaker 131
Speaker 134
Speaker 139
Speaker 133
Speaker 148