Just days after announcing it would furlough 400 employees, Cookeville Regional Medical Center says it is struggling to keep up with the cost of personal protective equipment.
At a livestreamed press conference Monday afternoon, Cookeville Mayor Ricky Shelton said the rising prices of masks and gowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated by their increased use in recent weeks, is taking a toll on the hospital.
Shelton said the overall cost to outfit a medical provider with protective gear has gone up from $2 per employee for each visit into a patient room to $25, just in the past month. The mayor said he’d been told by the hospital’s CEO, Paul Korth, that the cost of N95 masks had jumped from 61 cents to $7 each, gowns from 36 cents to $8.50 and surgical masks from 4 cents to $1.50.
Nurses and doctors are also wearing protective gear much more than they did in the past. Shelton said staff are using about nine times more N95 respirator masks than they were before the coronavirus outbreak. And that number is only expected to keep climbing as cases continue to rise through April, he added.
But Shelton said the medical center has no plans to shirk on protective gear, no matter the cost.
“They have not hesitated in spending the high price for the PPE so that the providers and staff can provide safe and effective patient care. Providers and staff are the most valuable resource at the medical center.”
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