Ellsworth County Medical Center’s Andrew Bair said Friday that local efforts to curve the spread of Covid-19 have brought out the worst and the best in people.

The hospital’s chief executive officer told his board of directors the worst was having to deal with a group of visitors who were angry at being unable to visit their loved ones because of the medical center’s restricted access policy.

The best was when a trio of Ellsworth Junior-Senior High School music students — Logan Erichsen, Noah Erichsen, and Adam Vehring — stood outside the hospital and serenaded patients and staff.

“It was just beautiful,” Bair said.

The story also was a good segue into the efforts of local health professionals to fight a virus that continues to be responsible for deaths across the world.

This past week, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly issued a statewide stay-at-home order until April 19.

Bair said Ellsworth County is doing “pretty good.”

“I don’t know what you do when you get people stacked on top of each other like New York City,” he said. “That’s got to be really hard.”

Bair talked briefly about the incident command he and his executive team have organized at ECMC.

“What we have here is an orchestrated way of dealing with catastrophic emergencies,” he said. “Usually when you think about this, you think of the tornadoes or the prison or something like that where this room would be full of people on their laptops and phones communicating back and forth with different people on the outside and funneling all that information to an incident commander.”

Bair said that is not the case at ECMC.

“It’s not been business as usual here,” he said. “In fact, all the things I thought were my high priorities to accomplish this quarter have been turned by the wayside.”

Bair said the hospital has spent considerable time during the last three months preparing for a crisis such as COVID-19.

“We started this before we knew there was anything happening in China,” he said. “It’s been my experience since being here that our county, and our community is pretty ready. They have meetings all the time which I’ve not seen in other places. And yet our hospital relied on one person to keep track of all of that. I found that we needed a more diverse group.”

With an incident command structure now in place at ECMC, any of the executive team could slide into his role if something were to happen to him.

Bair said the number of cases in the United States has skyrocketed as COVID-19 has spread around the world. At present, the U.S. leads the world in COVID-19 cases.

“That’s why all the social isolation is being pushed,” he added.

He said Ellsworth County is partially surrounded by counties reporting patients with positive test results for the virus.

ECMC has developed a cost center to track all expenses related to COVID-19 and developed a plan for well visits.

“We really felt like it would destroy the organization if we stopped seeing our well visits,” he said. “We run a pretty tight margin so we needed to retain that.”

Bair said the hospital’s goals are to ensure the community it is prepared for COVID -19, to provide safe and compassionate care, to continue to reduce the risk to its employees, and to remain viable.

“If we don’t remain viable, when we come to the end of this, then the communities are forever at risk,” he said. “And at risk in many different ways.”

Bair said since the hospital is closed to visitors, he has been asked if it is okay for visitors or family members to stand outside patient windows.

“Yes, but now we’re going have to number our windows because you don’t want them looking in at the wrong people,” he said.

Bair said the hospital is doing everything it can to get ready for its first case of COVID-19.

He said the hospital cleaning crew has been constantly wiping down door knobs in addition to normal cleaning duties.

“Our team, each and every one of them, is putting forth an enormous amount of work over this whole coronavirus,” Bair said.

The hospital team has also talked about the possibility of virtual visits.

In other business:

• A set of policies and procedures was approved as recommended by Shamarie Farthing, director of risk and safety and quality.

• After a 15-minute executive session to discuss non-elected personnel (specifically to discuss appointments/reappointments of medical staff ) Dr. Gary Wilson’s voluntary resignation was approved.

• Steve Berkhouse, chief financial officer, said gross revenue for February was $1,986,402, compared to the budgeted gross revenue of $2,050,312.

“I believe that is the highest revenue for fiscal year 2020 in a single month,” he said.

ECMC recorded a gain in February of $87,152 from the 340B drug program. Year-to-date, that gain is $683,347.

Berkhouse said the hospital is pretty close to getting all of its debt paid off within one to one-and-a-half years. He said the hospital currently has a $600,000 debt and 80 percent of that debt is the new Cerner electronic financial information system.

• Board member Karen Pauley said she was concerned with the hospital’s cash on hand. Berkhouse said he was as well given the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Pauley suggested the hospital consider a line of credit.

However, Berkhouse said because of state law, it is his understanding the hospital can’t do that.

“We are looking at every option we have available,” he said.

• Approval was given to finance the $178,000 cost of the new Omnicell pharmacy cabinets with First Bank Kansas with a five-year loan at 2 percent interest.