Missouri hospitals are enabled to continue providing pandemic-level healthcare despite Gov. Mike Parson ending the state’s COVID-19-related state of emergency, according to the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA)
“The waivers we were able to put in place within 24 hours made a significant difference and those are related to things like our ability to operate a number of beds above the licensure limit,” said Dave Dillon, MHA spokesperson.
For example, if a hospital bed is designated for psychiatric or behavioral, it can still be immediately converted into a critical care bed.
“Those are the kind of things that were included in the waivers that were a part of the emergency order,” Dillon told the St. Louis Record.
Gov. Mike Parson ended the state of emergency by default when he decided against extending it last week, according to media reports.
“With the Department of Health and Senior Services, the Board of Healing Arts, and the Board of Nursing, we were able to work through an extension of the waivers without a state of emergency,” Dillon said. “There are a couple of waivers we are still working on but they're not real difference makers. They tend to be related to telehealth services but our problem right now is with patient beds.”
Another waiver that has yet to be finalized is the licensure of physicians from out of state.
“It’s a more cumbersome process without the waiver but we're also in an environment where we're probably not doing that much of it because we're in a national surge and for most organizations, it's cost-prohibitive to bring in additional staff from elsewhere.”
Overall, however, a large percent of the pandemic-related practices that were included in the emergency order will continue without the emergency order, according to Dillon.
“What matters is that we have the flexibility to manage our hospitals’ capacity through an emergency and the evidence suggests that because of our engagement with the Department of Health and other state agencies and the governor's office, we are now in a position to do that,” he said.
The state of emergency had been in effect nearly two years since March 13, 2020.
“The Department of Health and Senior Services created a process where we hospitals could simply request that the majority of the waivers continue for their organizations by sending a form letter and the majority of hospitals did that,” Dillon added. “The only thing that is not presently, either identical or very similar to what was waived through the emergency declaration, is that there are components that relate to licensing boards that are in statute and not in rule. So, the state Department of Health and Senior Services can't simply waive the requirement.”