HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – This week Northern Montana Hospital (NMH) has started to reschedule procedures that were previously postponed due to COVID-19.
Northern Montana Hospital Chief of Surgery Damian Ymzon said, “we are now at the point where we feel comfortable scheduling more surgeries and procedures here at NMH. Starting this week, we have been adding several procedures into our daily schedules. We are assessing the cases based on the urgency of individual situations and on possible risk/exposures. Monitoring our supplies as we move along will also be a factor in these decisions. We will be contacting our patients in order to reschedule their procedures.”
NMH wants the public to know they have had to change a few things to keep COVID-19 protocols in place.
1. Patients will only be allowed to bring one other adult for support into the facility.
2. Patients and the individual accompanying them will have to be screened and masked before entering.
3. The accompanying individual will then wait in the Surgical Day Care area where they will stay until the procedure is over.
4. Once the procedure or surgery is finished both individuals will leave by exiting through a separate facility entrance.
NMH may also conduct COVID-19 screenings before a patient has a procedure scheduled.
Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator Julianne LaSmith said If you have a procedure or surgery scheduled hospital personnel will be there to walk you through protocols.
“What happens whenever you have a day surgery here at Northern Montana Hospital, nurses will call you a couple days beforehand and go over everything. So, someone will talk to you about what meds to take, what time you should be there, and what’s going to happen when you get there but you can always call back and ask more questions.”
LaSmith said these changes are something the public needs to be aware of and if anyone has any questions they should feel free to contact them.
“If they have any questions ahead of time, they can definitely call and talk to their doctor, their nurse, anyone of our phone nurses can answer some questions – they can even call Surgical Day Care and get questions answered that way.”
For more information visit nmhcare.org. or call Northern Montana Healthcare at (406) 265-2211.
