EVANSVILLE — Two five-person Indiana National Guard teams will be deployed to Deaconess Midtown and Deaconess Gateway hospitals Friday for a week to support medical staff responding to COVID-19.
Ascension St. Vincent Evansville said Friday it is not receiving National Guard assistance "at this time."
Deaconess confirmed the National Guard's help Thursday, saying each team will include one health care worker in the ICU and one in the emergency department to help with patient care. The teams will field three support staffers each to perform such tasks as cleaning rooms and transporting patients within hospitals.
"It’ll help our workload for our people that are there now, and we’re certainly grateful for that," Deaconess spokesman Lance Wilkerson said.
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Deaconess Trauma Service Line Manager Jillian Swearer said the National Guard's assistance was facilitated by the Indiana State Department of Health, which she said maintains five teams to help health systems throughout the state.
"Due to our current COVID numbers, we qualify for a team," Swearer said. "They look at how many COVID patients you have in your area and help decide where those team members should go."
Deaconess hospitals are at "the higher end" of capacity but aren't full, Swearer said.
"We still have capacity for patients and able to get patients in and out," she said. "We still have beds and room for patients and charging and coming in."
Judging by Deaconess's own data, its hospitals are not as crowded with coronavirus patients as they were at the beginning of the month. Deaconess reported on Facebook on Sept. 1 it had 179 COVID-positive hospitalized patients. The number on Wednesday was 137.
Although Deaconess treats patients who reside in all area counties, the hospital system's data tracks with what's happening in Vanderburgh County.
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New positive COVID-19 cases in Vanderburgh County peaked in the delta-fueled surge in the final week of August at 1,156. But the number was 626 — a little more than half as high — last week.
Swearer said hospitalization data can fluctuate hourly with large numbers of discharges and should be viewed as no more than a snapshot in time. Deaconess hospital can discharge as many as 100 patients in a single day, she said.
"It just depends on the time of day and how busy the ER is and how many patients you have coming in and out," she said.
Deaconess isn't the only area hospital getting help from the National Guard.
The Vincennes University Gibson County Center in Fort Branch began Tuesday hosting a free community drive-through COVID-19 testing and vaccine clinic in partnership with the Guard, the state health department and the Gibson County Health Department. The temporary clinic will end at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Gibson County Center at 8100 U.S. Highway 41.
Seven National Guard members arrived Wednesday at Clark Memorial Health in Jeffersonville, Indiana, to help hospital staff during the next one to two weeks.