GETTING TO KNOW NORTH SHORE HEALTH
North Shore Health Mask Policy Explained
By Jason Yuhas, Infection Control, Quality Improvement, Corporate Integrity Director and Troy Batchelor, Hospital Director of Nursing
With the diligence and hard work of our North Shore Health (NSH) Team and the strong support of our community, NSH made it through the COVID-19 pandemic without a single case of infection to our Care Center Residents. We also observed very few outbreaks within the NSH staff. When we reached the end of the pandemic, we all breathed a sigh of relief and thought everything would revert back to ‘normal’. With great anticipation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released its new COVID guidelines and our sigh of relief turned into to more of a gasp. They lowered the guidelines for the public but raised the guidelines for health care organizations; a fact that was not publicized. Along with raising the COVID guidelines to an earlier, during the height of the pandemic version, they also included increased tracking of other respiratory illnesses (Influenza A, Influenza B, and RSV). Since the CDC was no longer tracking COVID to the extent as it was before, and no longer has dictated mask mandates by the percentage of positives within the county, they said it should be the hospital’s responsibility to track positivity rates within the community and set standards for mask mandates. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) adopted the CDC guidelines. With these tracking modifications and mask mandate management, we were given the task to determine what thresholds would be placed for mask mandates and where and how we would obtain the information on all respiratory illnesses. New Hospital/Care Center policies had to be developed and instituted and how we would contact residents and family members in the case of an outbreak.
With our small community, gathering the data became the easy part. Sawtooth Mountain Clinic and Grand Portage share their infection rates with us on a weekly basis. The tricky part was setting the thresholds. What number would be the trigger for mask mandates and Care Center room isolations? This is when our small community numbers worked against us. The CDC calculated positive cases within 100,000 county residents. Since our county population is only around 6,000 individuals with a low case count, it was a more challenging number to determine. We looked historically at the numbers through the pandemic that came through the hospital and determined what we believed was reasonable (but would be unlikely to hit). Unfortunately, we have hit this threshold three times since the end of the pandemic.
Once we instituted mask usage, when could we cease while best protecting the health of our Residents, Patients, and Staff? What criteria would we need to meet? The CDC criteria of ‘no new traceable cases’ within the facility is what we adapted. We require all exposed residents and employees follow up with the recommended exposure testing. Mask mandates and isolations typically take approximately two weeks (sometimes more) as we work through all the exposed individuals.
There has been much discussion on the effectiveness of masks on respiratory illnesses. It has been our experience that masking does assist in the control of respiratory illnesses. Each time we have crossed our threshold and instituted NSH-wide masking, within one week our new infection rate has decreased dramatically. See the graph of our experience. The red bursts show when mask usage was instituted and the dramatic reduction that immediately followed in each case (COVID-19 is the gold bars).
The best-suggested mask to use during a respiratory illness outbreak is the KN-95. Unfortunately, many people feel restricted with a tight fitting mask. We continue to encourage employees, patients, residents and visitors to wear a mask when entering the hospital if they have any respiratory illness or symptoms.
Moving forward, whenever NSH reaches a respiratory illness infection threshold, we will enforce a mask mandate until the level of decrease deems it safe to lift. Thank you for your compliance as it helps to protect everyone at North Shore Health.
For more information, visit: https://www.northshorehealthgm.org. Stay tuned for future informative “Getting to Know North Shore Health” articles published monthly in the Cook County News Herald.