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Federal partners jump right in and go to work

Triage tents
LBJ’s acting chief of staff grateful for the “timely assistance”
fili@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — LBJ Medical Center’s acting chief of staff, Dr. Akapusi Ledua is thankful to the hospital’s “federal partners” for providing medical support — such as critical care nurses and doctors — in the coming days to assist the medical center in preparation in the event of a surge at the COVID Ward.

Dr. Ledua shared the information during a Zoom news conference earlier this week, saying the the partners, including the U.S Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) started with the support at the hospital on Monday helping out in the COVID quarantine tent for outpatient treatment.

The federal team arrived last Friday on island and Dr. Ledua said LBJ is “grateful and thankful to our federal partners who are able to provide us with... timely assistance working with us.”

The hospital is also thankful to its “federal partners who will be providing medical support for us from the 14th of March, providing us with necessities — critical care nurses, and critical care physicians to help us and prepare us if we have a surge in the COVID Ward in the next couple of days,” he pointed out.

Dr. Ledua noted that LBJ team met Saturday with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) officials, who also arrived Friday and “they have reviewed the infrastructure as we have to make sure that we are well prepared if there is going to be any COVID surge.”

On Monday this week, the USACE team was at the hospital “to look at work that needs to be done and recommendations and they will provide us with that assistance in setting up our infrastructure so that we can be better prepared to take care of our patients,” he said.

According to information received by Samoa News, the USACE’s team had reviewed LBJ drawings and layout options for future bed capacity-building.

At the start of his presentation on the hospital’s response plan to COVID-19, Dr. Ledua shared the three priorities for the only medical center in the territory, with the first one, “to provide healthcare services to the people of American Samoa, to prevent the spread, and impact of COVID-19.”

 “And we do that by working together in collaboration with our stake holders” — the Health Department, ASG — and “federal stakeholders to support our unified operation objectives to provide that healthcare services to you,” he said of the second priority.

And the third one “is to identify, by screening and testing everyone that comes to LBJ; we evaluate you — if you are positive or if you are negative we do further investigation, if need be, and we do manage you if we find out that you are positive for COVID-19.”

“We do that so that we can prevent any deaths and to minimize anybody from becoming more sick with COVID-19,” he said and gave a summary of LBJ’s Code Red policy for outpatient and inpatient care.

He explained that outpatient clinics are operating with scheduled appointments for patients only. “Patients that call and we feel it’s important [for them] to be seen in the outpatient clinic, we will contact you and coordinate the care at the hospital,” he said.

He emphasized that everyone seen at the outpatient clinic, is screened to make sure they COVID-19 negative before allowing the person into the clinic and “if positive, you will be managed accordingly.”

For those who require inpatient admission, they go through the emergency room — and they are admitted first to the quarantine COVID tent while waiting to be seen and evaluated by the physician of the respective service that will see the patient.

“And if you are determined to be admitted to the hospital, you will be admitted to the COVID Ward — where you will be taken care of,” he said.

According to the medical doctor, LBJ wants to make sure that this information for outpatient clinics and inpatient care is disseminated to all level of hospital operations, so that everyone that works in the hospital is informed and understands the policy “so we can allow a smooth workflow for the patients.”

Dr. Ledua also shared ongoing tasks at LBJ that include “evaluating operations” at LBJ “and we are identifying gaps, and we are making amendments to our operations policy, so we  can improve what we do and make sure that we take care of the heath of our people in a smooth and in a professional manner.

“Some of the urgent needs that we have right now is our staffing,” he said, adding that at the time of the news conference, “we have adequate staff to take care of patients both for outpatients and those admitted to the hospital.”

Dr. Ledua reiterated that it’s very important that the policy at LBJ and other developments under Code Red are “disseminated to the public for you to know that we are doing our best at the hospital” to care for patients.