NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb has started to ease restrictions on elective surgeries. As of Tuesday, hospitals in the Hoosier state could resume certain procedures. It comes in Holcomb’s newest executive order extending the stay at home order through May 1.
The action is more than a month after Indiana hospitals have been postponing elective surgeries to keep space and resources available for COVID 19 patients.
It took a toll on other health facilities in Indiana as well.
“We furloughed a significant number of our staff,” said Al Knable with Associates in Dermatology. Knable is also a New Albany City Councilman and works at Associates in Dermatology’s southern Indiana location. “We’ve had an impact of about 80 to 85 percent reduction in patient volume.”
But that could change soon, according to Holcomb’s latest order. It allows for hospitals to resume procedures to diagnose or treat medical conditions like cardiac, vascular, or cancer procedures.
It could also loosen restrictions on other health facilities like dental or dermatology offices starting next week.
“With our furloughed workers we’re looking forward to bringing those folks back on as soon as we can. We brought one staff member on today in anticipation of that to help with scheduling,” said Knable. “My hope is that we’ll have our Indiana office back up fully running by the end of the second week of May."
Knable says he’s ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the move, noting the importance of certain procedures.
“What I think everybody in the healthcare community, physicians and patients alike, we’re trying to look out for small things now before they become big.”
But Knable says safety procedures will still be in place, even if the state allows for loosened restrictions.
“We want people to be able to really come back with confidence,” he said. “So we’re still going to be running our waiting room at 25 and 30 percent of capacity. We’re still going to be converting what we can to telehealth visits. We’re probably going to be screening for temperatures until such a time that there’s a vaccination available.”
Plus he says regular cleaning will continue and masks will still be used.
“Hopefully by us ramping this up slowly will kind of be the first step on the way back to normalcy for a lot of people,” he said.
The governor has said it will be a phased approach, and restrictions on medical procedures will be re-evaluated every seven days.
For the answers to frequently asked questions surrounding the executive order, click here.
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