By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

St. Luke Hospital will have the use of two ventilators available through a Kansas Department of Emergency Management program.

The ventilators could arrive as soon as Friday, but chief nursing officer Kathy McMillan hasn’t yet been notified exactly when ventilators will arrive.

She’s glad they will be coming because the devices will be a benefit to the hospital’s patients.

Hospital

Larger hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID and other patients. St. Luke has recently had difficulty finding places to transfer patients who need higher levels of care.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment asked health care coalitions to survey the hospitals to see who would want ventilators, said Denise Kelly, director of KDHE’s preparedness program.

Critical access hospitals across the state were notified Friday that 78 ventilators would be loaned to small hospitals and staff will be trained to use them.

“It can be a challenge when you have a patient that needs a higher level of care,” McMillan said. “We could provide some of that care if we had the equipment to do that.”

Jane Welch, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant General’s Office, said the equipment will be here within days.

“Distribution begins Friday and will be complete by early next week, so the hospital should have it not later than Wednesday next week,” Welch said. “Funding was provided through the CARES act.”

Kelly said if an outbreak occurs and the ventilators are needed elsewhere, the machines could be moved to a different hospital.

“The ventilators with cases will be delivered utilizing the Civil Air Patrol to beginning Friday,” Kelly wrote in an email to hospitals.