Kalkaska Memorial Health Center is a rural, non-profit health center in Northern Michigan that provides the community a wide variety of care options. From emergency and urgent care, to outpatient surgery and a U.S. News & World Report award-winning long term care facility, the health center goes above and beyond what many community hospitals of its size can offer.
Like every hospital, doctor’s office, and nursing home across the country, Kalkaska Memorial had to spring into action quickly when the Covid-19 pandemic started. The center was determined to do everything in its power to keep patients, residents, and staff safe from nosocomial Covid-19 infections (an infection acquired while in a healthcare facility), and this meant following every CDC and state guideline to a tee – including temperature screening everyone upon entry.
Key Learning: By taking a purposefully thorough and science-backed approach to curbing the spread of Covid-19 – including implementing a welloStationX – Kalkaska Memorial Health Center was able to prevent any nosocomial infections in their long-term care facility, and saw zero Covid-related deaths.
A Necessary Yet Inefficient Process
When the pandemic first started, Kalkaska Memorial leadership staff implemented stringent rules and guidelines to keep residents, patients, and employees safe.
“Covid was tough for all health care systems,” said Jeremy Cannon, Vice President – Chief Nursing Officer at Kalkaska Memorial. “People didn’t want to go to the hospital out of fear of catching it, so we had an obligation to show the community that this is a safe place to go get care.”
This entailed a mask requirement, social distancing guidelines, hand hygiene stations, and temperature screenings for anyone who entered the facility. For employees though, the process included a requirement to stay home from work if showing any symptoms, 15 minute antigen Covid tests to help catch asymptomatic spread, and the manual recording of each employee’s temperature to meet state requirements. This meant shifting two staff members away from their normal duties.
“When it first started it was paper, pencil, and a handheld thermometer,” said Heather Soenksen, Director of Employee Relations at Kalkaska Memorial. “It took two people, one doing the temperatures and one recording them. We then shifted to having the recorder put the information into a computer for auditing purposes, but it was still an inefficient process.”
At times, Kalkaska Memorial would have a log jam of six to seven employees trying to enter the facility.
A Smarter Way Forward
About one month prior to the pandemic, Cannon had begun researching screening options for visitors of the long-term care section of the medical center.
“I was always wondering how I was supposed to know a visitor doesn’t have influenza or another serious infection that could really pose a threat to our residents.”
In his research, he discovered Wello and welloStationX. So, when the employee temperature screening process became both expensive and inefficient during Covid, Cannon knew there was a better option.
“I was looking for something user-friendly, accurate, and efficient,” he said. “But the part that was really crucial for us was having pin numbers for employees so we knew for sure they scanned upon entry, and we could easily prove that to the state surveyors.”
With Wello, Kalkaska Memorial can assign each employee a unique pin number that they must enter on the welloStationX prior to the temperature screening. The station then sends the date, time, and temperature reading to Wello’s cloud, so Kalkaska leadership can easily see the historical scans associated with each pin.
“Funny enough, the state surveyor did come in and we were able to pull those reports of our employees’ screenings almost instantaneously.”
Key Takeaway – By implementing a welloStationX for employee temperature screenings, Kalkaska Memorial was able to speed up their entry process, save money on staff members having to manually take/record the temperatures, and simplify the state auditing process.
Creating a Safer Future
While Kalkaska Memorial is currently using the welloStationX for employee temperature screenings only, they see this changing in the future.
“We wanted a piece of equipment that could serve us post-covid and help us keep our long term care residents safe,” Cannon said.
As with any long term care facility, keeping residents safe from outside infections is key, and Kalkaska believes welloStationX will be a key part of helping them do so.
Overall, Cannon and Soenksen both believe the welloStationX has improved their employee temperature screening process, helped them prevent Covid spread, and will continue to be a part of the facility after the pandemic.
“I would fully endorse someone to buy a welloStationX. I think we’ve had favorable results with Covid and I don’t think that was an accident.
It wasn’t just one thing that did it, it was all of the steps we took. The welloStationX was a part of that success, there’s just no doubt about it.”
Jeremy Cannon
