Christus Good Shepherd reflects on lessons learned, progress made since 2020

Published 5:45 am Saturday, January 22, 2022

It was March 2020. The world was learning about an emerging global virus that was highly contagious and deadly. As the virus spread to other countries, and eventually to the West Coast of the United States, there were so many unknowns. Could it be transmitted through packaged surfaces? Was the virus airborne? Hospitals around the country weren’t the least prepared for what was to come, but one Longview hospital soared among the heights of uncertainty and found stability through unity.

“I think we may have our first COVID case,” were the words Chief Medical Officer Dr. Mark Anderson heard over the phone from an lead emergency physician at Christus Good Shepherd Hospital.

Weeks before the first case was detected in Longview, Anderson had conversations with his wife about how no one was talking about the virus enough and its potential severity.

Immediately, he called Christus Good Shepherd CEO Todd Hancock to begin putting plans in place they had prepared for but weren’t quite ready to use at the time.

In working with local health departments to report the case, medical staff jumped into the necessity full speed and appropriate precautions were put into place. The hospital closed its doors to visitors and healthcare workers and nurses stepped into their new uniforms — personal protective equipment.

It was in this moment that Anderson said began to trigger the general public and help them realize this was a reality. The virus wasn’t just something that was touching the coasts and other countries, but it was actually hitting the heartland of the country.

Hancock said the first case was shocking and described hearing the news as the “first punch in the stomach.”

“We knew for sure once that case was confirmed that it may have been the first, but it certainly was not going to be the last,” Hancock said.

Efforts were doubled, as the hospital raced against the clock to ensure they were ready for the global pandemic that was already in their hospital.

Hancock explained that when the first quarantine lockdown occurred, it wasn’t because hospitals were at full capacity, but it was for hospitals to prepare for that because it would come. With massive shortages throughout the country and throughout the world, such as PPE equipment, therapeutic drugs, and more, Hancock said they were not adequately prepared.

But the resilient team found a way to make it all work while providing exceptional care for their patients.

“We did become prepared. Our organization was amazing in terms of learning how to navigate these worldwide shortages for equipment and supplies,” he said.

Through getting medical staff on board and the uncertainty of almost everything around them, everything the hospital had prepared for was needed.

Of Christus Hospital systems around the country, Good Shepherd was the only Christus hospital system to reach Triage Level 3, meaning 60% of the hospital’s population were COVID patients, meanwhile still seeing other general procedure patients.

A major struggle that affected almost every hospital around the country was the nursing shortage, something that still affects Good Shepherd to this day. Hancock explained the demand for nurses was high as more people contracted the virus. As a result, large amounts of money were being spent on travel nurses to work at different hospitals.

“Communities like ours were losing lots of nurses to go and take these assignments as traveling nurses in these larger cities, so we began to experience a shortage of nurses, really, before we had COVID patients. At a time when we were wanting to prepare for what would eventually come, the first thing we began to notice was staff shortages as our nurses left our communities and went to other places,” said Hancock.

According to Hancock, the price to hire a nurse has increased exponentially. Many hospitals are having to use contract nurses, which are four to five times the rate higher than a hospital’s conventional nurse.

Throughout struggles and hurdles to overcome, innovation and creativity through great partnerships have helped make a difference. The Longview hospital recently received $1 million from Gregg County to help keep local nurses at their hospital.

State and local partners made a difference, Hancock said, even with funding vaccine hubs, where Hancock said that during a four-month timeframe, over 70,000 vaccines were administered by Good Shepherd.

“The creativity and adaptability, flexibility of our medical staff, administrative staff, all the associates and nurses… Everyone was working, thinking of new ways to provide care or expand our access or ability to bring patients into hospitals. People were working diligently to figure out how to solve those problems,” Anderson said.

Questions that arise for critical care doctors at the hospital. How do you create units that are isolating patients? How do you create screening processes so you know your surgical environment is safe?

“Everyone worked continuously to create solutions to those problems and it’s a massive team effort. That’s really why we’ve been so successful. We built teams that solve the problems when given all the challenges and unknowns we had,” Anderson said.

Doctors also had to stop working on elective cases, which was significant at Good Shepherd, as they house one of the largest outpatient surgery centers in the state. Anesthesiologists, those doctors and those nurses, as well as that space, were all focused on COVID.

“Our ER, at one point, was extensively an ICU. We still had the day-to-day business of taking care of ER patients, so we created an ER tent in the parking lot. Patients would drive up, they would be triaged, and they would be taken care of at that tent,” said Hancock.

Third-year residents of Good Shepherd’s Internal Medical Residency program were drafted into that service. This was only one of countless examples of ways the hospital innovated and got through the high levels of the pandemic.

“I remember establishing a drive-thru testing center… Just an amazing amount of effort to work all that traffic and move those people through a drive-thru line… a lot of innovation, a lot of efficiencies,” Hancock said.

Looking forward, Hancock said a major key is the question, “How do we take these things that we learned and how does it make us serve the community better?” He described it as the task that lies ahead for the hospital.

“Out of great calamity and times of crisis, comes these types of innovation and I know we will be better for having gone through this crucible,” Hancock said.

Another good thing that came out of the hardest times of the pandemic was working together with organizations that were previously competitors.

“We had to turn to each other. We gave drugs to our competitors, they gave us things and we took patients when they couldn’t and they took patients when we couldn’t. We really pulled together. There was no competitiveness, there was only solving the problem,” Hancock said.

Looking back on what the hospital has overcome and is still working to do, and approaching what will be the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Christus Good Shepherd Hospital in Longview has realized what capability they had that they didn’t know before.

“I can tell you without hesitation that in Tyler and Longview communities, we are more prepared medically today than we have been in our lifetime because of what has happened,” Hancock said.