Hello I'm Dr. Dennis McKenna,
as always joined by Dr. Fred Venditti
our hospital system general director.
Today is Tuesday, July 28th,
providing you the update from Albany Medical Center.
All right the COVID numbers,
first graph is the Capital Region, eight counties.
These are people admitted
and currently being treated for COVID-19.
Fred, 38, so that number is hanging in the 30s.
Yep, it's just hovering there.
Okay, very good.
Next graph is Albany Medical Center admissions
and discharges and you can see again
the pattern remains the same.
We may admit one or two, we may discharge one or two.
And now let's flip to the next graph
which is our morning census.
Fred, we currently have 16 in the hospital,
looks like 15 on the floor, one in the ICU,
not on a ventilator.
So we're in the 10-20 range and we have been now
for a couple weeks.
Actually, Dennis, a month now.
About a month.
We've been a month hovering in the range.
All right, so we'll keep a close eye on that.
Fred, let's talk a little bit about
something that was in the news yesterday.
We run a child care center called Albany Med Kids.
That's right, Dennis.
It used to be called the Kidskeller.
And as was reported yesterday we had a staff member there
who tested positive for COVID.
And so we took some steps to explore that
a little bit deeper.
As a result of that, we decided to close
the AMC Kids for two weeks.
So let's talk about that.
Fred, what's the background?
So the background is that that staff member
was actually exposed to a family member
who was positive.
So community acquired.
Community acquired, did the right thing,
immediately got tested, turned out to be positive.
And then that started a cascade
of changes that we needed to make, testing we did,
and the ultimate closure for these two weeks.
The staff members who work at Albany Med Kids
wear masks in the classroom all the time.
They do, they do, but the children don't.
The children don't, and we did end up testing children.
I think we tested 62 children and I think 7
came back positive.
That's right, and none of them are symptomatic.
Okay.
But they did test positive.
That's right, Dennis.
So none had to come to the hospital to be treated.
As a result of that, working our Department of Epidemiology
and the County Health Department,
out of an abundance of caution,
decided to send home for two weeks, terminal clean,
look at our processes, and then open up again
in another two weeks.
That's right, so somewhere around August 10th
will be the reopening.
Okay, very good.
So obviously to those who work over there
we thank them for practicing safely, wearing the masks,
and we'll do the right thing
and we'll open up in two weeks.
Absolutely.
Okay, very good.
Fred, today is Tuesday so the governor typically updates
the quarantine state list and I think the list
actually has gone up.
It has, Dennis.
So five localities have been added.
So Kentucky, Illinois, and gotta look, Minnesota.
So now 34 states are on the quarantine list,
plus DC, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico.
So it's really a very significant part of the country
that has a surge of COVID and is on our quarantine list.
So what that means for us is obviously
as visitors come in and as our staff come back,
we have a process obviously to ask that question.
Fred, I think this weekend we actually open up
a new annex location where staff members
can come and be checked.
That's right, Dennis.
So to try to relieve the crush on Monday morning,
on Sunday afternoon we opened up,
actually up on F2 again, where we had been doing testing
during the pandemic earlier,
for staff members who traveled and are coming back
and needed to be tested before they could
come back to work.
So we tested 14 people there.
Then on Monday we tested 31 people at Employee Health.
But if you're traveling, and coming back
and need to be tested, one of our employees,
take advantage of that Sunday afternoon.
It sure is an important thing.
And it's very important for our staff members.
We obviously don't know that they've left the state.
They have to self report that when they come back.
So it's important for them to know
we have that resource available to come in
and get checked before they go back to work.
Professional responsibility.
For sure, for sure.
Speaking of professional responsibility Fred,
we talk a lot about wearing masks around here,
but as we've talked about there are other things
that we need to do to protect ourselves
and to protect our staff.
And one of those things is over a century old,
which is washing hands, right?
Some very important studies were done
over a century ago that show that can reduce infection.
And I think that this is something
that even pre-COVID we would do some secret shopping on,
and we would check and see whether or not
our staff were washing their hands.
We've always had good numbers,
but I think recently we have some more data.
That's right, Dennis.
So actually the nursing organization decided
at the beginning of the year that they
were going to do a quality improvement project.
So they were going to really focus on hand hygiene
within the organization.
So every nursing unit is supposed to audit
a certain number of their staff every day
and report when someone hasn't done
appropriate hand hygiene, to the person,
and real time try to correct that.
So that's been going on even pre-COVID.
And actually the most recent data is really pretty good.
20 of our units are in the green,
so they're hitting all the metrics
that they laid out for this quality improvement project.
And one unit's actually doing something really interesting.
The apheresis unit actually is having the patients
audit their caregivers.
So at the end of their treatment,
they're asked to fill out a form.
Did your caregivers wash their hands before and after?
That's absolutely fantastic.
Kathy Gregg is the nurse manager there, shout out to here.
That's just terrific.
So 20 units in the green, that means there's some units
that aren't in the green.
So this is a challenge from Steve Corey,
the AVP who's running this project,
to those not in the green, get in the green.
Get in the green, get in the green.
So it's not just masking, it's also hand hygiene.
It's also eye protection at the bedside.
It's all those things together.
All those things, very important, very important, Dennis.
Fred, there's been a lot in the news lately
about vaccination and trials.
Maybe on Thursday we can update what the status
of some of those trials are.
I know some are in phase three,
and it might help us to explain to our workforce
and others what's going on out there.
I think that's a great idea, Dennis.
It's really quite exciting.
If those phase three trials pan out,
then we have vaccines.
All right, great.
So we'll update that on Thursday.
We had mentioned that on a going forward basis
we are going to have members of our workforce,
management, and front line providers
appear in these videos going forward.
So I think pretty soon we're going to have the Dean
on the video, so we look forward to that.
And one of the reasons we're going to do that
is the College is starting its new academic year.
So I'm sure that Dr. Verdile will talk about other things,
but Fred, let's welcome the incoming class
of Albany Medical College 2024,
who are coming on campus I think this week.
That's right, welcome to Albany.
Welcome to Albany, and I was Albany Medical College
class of '92.
Let me share some statistics out there.
So we are seating a class of 145 students,
which I believe is,
the largest we've ever had.
The largest class ever.
There are 99 who are coming in
the traditional admission process.
But there's another 46 that come in via different pathways.
We have partnerships with several area colleges
like Siena, Union, RPI where people
will get accepted to medical college,
but go through undergrad first as part of
a six or eight year process.
That's right, that's right.
So they get accepted almost simultaneously if you will.
And you were mentioning the RPI program
is a well established program.
Absolutely, I remember it growing up
back in the '70s, I hate to date myself, but.
This is also the first year we are seating
four students from the University at Albany
who are part of what's called
the Early Assurance Pathway program.
And these are students
who are underrepresented in medicine.
So this is our first class with four of them coming in,
which is also great news.
Bravo.
A smart class, GPA 3.7.
54 of them are from New York state.
And I do love this statistic:
11,343 applications for 99 seats.
Amazing isn't it?
So it's an incredible class.
So congratulations to all of you
and we look forward to the great things that you will do.
All right and we'll hear from the Dean
either this week or next week.
That's right.
All right, good.
Anything else, Fred?
No I think that covers it, Dennis.
All right, we'll be back Thursday.
Let's talk about vaccines Thursday.
Until then, we ask that you please
take care of yourself, take care of each other,
and we'll see you in two days.
