TYLER, Texas — Personal protective equipment (PPE) has been in short supply for weeks.
While the stock is getting better for the doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, there are many who have remained dangerously low on the items that keep them safe.
Thankfully, that changes Thursday.
The Texas Medical Association is spearheading a new, online system where community physicians can request gloves, masks, gowns and more.
“We became aware quite quickly when we got into the pandemic that our doctors were short on PPE,” Dr. David Fleeger, President of the TMA, said. “We did a poll, and clearly, 60% of them had less than a week’s worth of PPE on hand within their offices.”
Dr. Fleeger says, at one point, hospitals were getting around 96% of all the PPE distributed by the State of Texas.
“They, of course, have the highest priority because they need to be prepared to take care of the sickest patients,” Dr. Fleeger said, adding that independent clinics have been receiving a larger percentage.
According to a 2015 report from the North Texas Regional Extension Center, nearly half of the physicians in Texas work in their own clinics, rather than in hospitals.
Dr. Fleeger says the TMA began working on the issue of supplying those clinics with PPE a few weeks ago. The result is a partnership with the Texas Department of Emergency Management, other trade groups, county medical societies and Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) to launch an online portal where doctors can easily ask for what they need.
“The PPE should start flowing [Thursday],” Dr. Fleeger said. “And we’re hoping that a doctor should be able to, after a couple days, actually see a delivery.
According to Dr. Fleeger, it may not be everything they were asking for, because there’s still a deficit of PPE, but it is going to be a portion of what the doctor needs. He says it is going to allow doctors to get their offices open and allow them to start seeing patients again.
“They might just get three days’ worth to begin with," Dr. Fleeger said. "And then a couple weeks from now, they might have a week’s worth, and a couple weeks after that, they might have a couple weeks’ worth. It’ll be a slow process, but we’ll be able to get them moving, get those patients protected in the offices, get the employees and the doctors protected, have everybody get to seeing patients again.”
The timing is important because Governor Greg Abbott eased restrictions on elective procedures and tests last week. More dentists and doctors are able to open their offices and resume treating patients, and after approximately a month away, the demand for treatment may have increased.
Dr. Fleeger says it took so longer to create this system because the RACs, the final piece of the supply chain, were not designed to handle such a burden.
“There’s never been a pandemic like this,” Dr. Fleeger stated. “These RACs are made to provide materials for hurricanes, tornadoes, other localized disasters, not disasters across the state.”
Dr. Fleeger also says the state is installing six machines in major cities around Texas that can sterilize N95 masks so doctors and nurses can reuse them.
Each one of them will be able to clean approximately 80,000 masks per day, further increasing supplies. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler already has such a system and Dr. Fleeger praised the institution for being ahead of the curve.