The Macon County Board of Commissioners approved several measures to help the Department of Public Health better combat COVID-19 during their monthly meeting Jan. 12.
It was a particularly busy week for the health department. On Jan. 11, the health department said they would no longer report COVID-19 clusters so that they could “realign our resources to better support the vaccination roll-out process.”
The department was also widely criticized for its phone service, which hadn’t been able to keep up with the volume of incoming calls related to vaccination and testing appointments with its 15 available phone lines. Public Health director Kathy McGaha said that calls are coming in faster than the staff could return them, reaching the point where they decided to stop accepting voicemails out of futility.
“The calls have come in at such a rate that we have pretty much took down Frontier,” McGaha told the commissioners. “We have over 700 voicemails to return. There is no way we can get to all of those voicemails.”
This is partially due to the strain on the phone service across the region as Western North Carolinians call their health departments at higher rates, but the key issue is boots on the ground. McGaha said that her staff was spread too thin and didn’t have enough time to make and carry out appointments for everyone who expressed interest.
“I could have a duplicate set of my staff and then test all week and vaccinate all week,” McGaha said. “There are some of them that are willing to keep working, but it means overtime.”
There were minor trepidations about expanding the health department’s workforce. Healthcare professionals are in high demand all over the country right now – in fact, the department has had job postings listed for four nurses since last summer. County manager Derek Roland said the county might need more time to find enough workers even if the funding was approved.
“It’s not necessarily a problem of whether we have the resources,” Roland said. “It’s tough to get nurses in general.”
Some in attendance believe the county’s greatest areas of need don’t require an extensive background in medicine. Dr. Gustav Wilde, a private practitioner who attended the meeting to offer his thoughts on addressing the county’s testing and vaccination woes, said that filling positions for testing and walking people through procedures would be easier than hiring registered nurses.
“It doesn’t really require a medical person to do a lot of this stuff,” Wilde said. “Yeah, somebody who can give a shot, that needs a nurse or a medical assistant… but it does not require an RN to do testing. If you can stick a q-tip up your nose, you can do the testing.”
Wilde also proposed that the health department move testing to a different facility, perhaps a community center, while performing vaccinations at the health department to avoid spreading the virus between the two groups and give them each space to work five days per week. This idea was popular with the commissioners, who said it would alleviate the risk to the community.
“I do like Dr. Wilde’s point where you’re not testing sick people while vaccinating people who are scared to death of getting out,” commissioner Josh Young said.
As for the money, the commissioners felt it was their job to take whatever steps were necessary to prevent further interruptions in the county’s testing and vaccination schedule. As cases continue to spike around the country, Macon County’s most vulnerable citizens need all of the help they can get.
“With our aging population, when you’ve got the percentage that we have that’s over 65… there’s nothing that I can think of more important right now,” commissioner Ronnie Beale said.
The commissioners unanimously approved a motion to appropriate the $100,000 already budgeted for filling four nursing positions to allow McGaha to hire more workers for positions of immediate need, as well as another motion allowing Roland to negotiate overtime payments for public health employees. The county has since posted job listings for five part-time processing assistants who will earn $15 per hour, but the deadline for application submittal was set for 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19 to fill the positions as quickly as possible. The county is also seeking volunteers to help enroll patients in the COVID-19 Vaccine Management System and has reached out to several local community clubs and religious organizations to help fill positions.
On Friday, Jan. 15, the Department of Public Health and Macon County IT established an online system to assist patients so that they don’t have to make multiple calls to the department. To complete an online registration for the vaccination, follow the link on the right side of the page at www.maconnc.org and provide it with your first name, last name and email address.
For more information about COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, call the Macon County Public Health Department at (828) 349-2517.