Midland Medical Lodge COVID-19 patients being moved to Midland Memorial Hospital

As the situation worsens at the Midland Medical Lodge, their management is now moving residents to MMH and calling in help from the state.

Over the weekend, two lodge residents died due to complications caused by the virus: one man in his 70s and another in his 80s.

Now, the lodge is outsourcing care to Midland Memorial Hospital and a rapid response team sent from the state.

Since Sunday, the lodge has been moving out every positive and suspected positive patient so they can get care at MMH instead.

In an email, a lodge representative wrote none of these patients are in “serious condition,” but they’ll get better care at the hospital.

However, she didn’t say what exactly made them want to make this change now.

Meanwhile, MMH’s CEO said taking on another 19 patients isn’t easy.

“Under any circumstances if we get an influx of patients of that size, it’s going to temporarily strain staff,” Russell Meyers said. “It’ll require us to pull resources from other areas to staff up for the evening and overnight shift as the patients come in.”

On top of that, this new group puts the hospital close their maximum patient capacity.

“Should that be the case, we will have to determine where the next unit will be to properly isolate those patients. Our nursing leadership team did develop a multi-stage plan early in this process so we know where and how we’ll open initial beds if we need them.”

As MMH makes the adjustments, the medical lodge is getting reinforcements from Texas’ Health And Human Services Rapid Response Team.

Lodge administration said their staff shortages have made it impossible to give effective care for the remaining 40 residents who haven’t tested positive for the virus.

So, this response team made up of two nurses and one epidemiologist are here to meet those needs and take some pressure off the lodge staff.

The lodge management said they could possibly get more staff members from the state if needed and for now they don’t know how long they will stay.

Meanwhile, Midland Memorial Hospital reports they now have a total of 21 Midland Medical Lodge patients in their care.