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Midland Memorial Hospital taking a step back amid COVID-19 surge

Midland Memorial announced Wednesday some new policy changes due to the rise in COVID hospitalizations.

MIDLAND, Texas — If you have loved ones in the hospital, there are new policies in place that you should know about. 

One includes the visitation policy. Only pediatric patients, mothers in labor, and patients who need someone to speak for them will be allowed to have a visitor.

"Because of the surge and the dramatic increase of the disease in the community and the risk that that runs to everyone here, we're going to reduce our visitation back to the more restrictive terms that we had in place for most of the time that we've been in the pandemic," said Russell Meyers, CEO of Midland Memorial Hospital.

The rise in cases has even started to affect the scheduling on in-patient care.

"We haven’t curtailed inpatient surgery just yet, that remains a possibility as full as we are and as difficult as it will be to find beds for post-surgical patients as those cases are not. We're assessing that right now. If there’s any change of practice we will have reviewed that with our surgeons and anesthesia providers and then get it out to the whole community," Meyers said.

One thing MMH has done the last few weeks is accept different kinds of transfer patients. That is also changing with the exception of COVID patients.

"We’re not accepting transfers at the moment. We'll reconsider that every few hours as we're expected to do and we'll open as soon as we can but it continues to be a big problem for us as we deal with an unprecedented amount of transfers in with COVID diagnoses," Meyers said.

Even though there aren't more restrictive policies in place, MMH will keep both entrances open.

"We will still keep the two entrances open, correct? The ED entrance is primarily for patients who are on the way to the emergency department. The entrance into the main lobby of the Scharbauer tower is for other inpatients and outpatients and the few visitors that we have will have more restrictive rules," Meyers said.

Despite all these changes, the hospital will be reviewing these policies daily depending on what their census looks like in terms of total patients and COVID patients.

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