Mercy Gradually Restarts Services

With many stay-at-home orders expiring and the apparent effectiveness of our communities' response to COVID-19 in limiting the spread of coronavirus, Mercy is taking careful, deliberate steps in reactivating services previously postponed.

Mercy has established three specific criteria that must be met for procedures to be rescheduled: The community must have seen 14 days of sustained decrease or flattening of COVID-19 hospitalizations, Mercy must have adequate personal protective equipment for patients and co-workers and enough COVID-19 testing supplies must be available for patients to be tested within 48 hours of some of their procedures.

"Testing patients is an important step that has allows us to reactivate services safely," said Dr. William Sistrunk, an infectious disease specialist at Mercy Hospital Springfield. "While protocols and safeguards like these aren't mandated by state law, we believe the safety of our patients and co-workers comes before anything."

Mercy's reactivation will be a phased process to ensure that resuming services does not cause coronavirus exposures or a surge in COVID-19 cases. Phase 1 primarily involves the return of essential services such as surgeries, imaging and diagnostics. Phase 2 will include services that are non-emergency but medically necessary. Phase 3 begins a return to the normal capacity of Mercy's services.

"The health and safety of our community is our top priority," said Cindy Weatherford, administrator of Mercy St. Francis Hospital. "We're continuing precautions to keep our patients and co-workers safe. We're still restricting visitors and screening patients for fever as they arrive at our doors, as well as masking all our co-workers. We want you to know that if you need health care, we're here to provide it in the safest environment possible."

Community members who have an appointment at a Mercy facility are asked to bring and wear their own cloth masks if they have one.