Salem Township Hospital President Kendra Taylor says the hospital is heavily involved in providing COVID-19 testing.
She reported since the beginning of the pandemic 3,564 tests have been processed.
“We are getting a lot of outpatient individuals who are coming out and seeking testing. Emergency Department as well but we are also processing the testing of our extended care facilities in the community so that’s adding to our volumes of COVID tests we are processing and running as well. That’s where some of the huge numbers…we are running some of those weekly for those individual companies that are mandated to be testing their employees, but we have also had a surge even in our own clinics of people seeking COVID testing.”
Taylor says the hospital is seeing volumes continue to return after a near shutdown of services in March and April in preparation for COVID-19. Inpatient use of the hospital was both above budget and last year for October. Taylor says there was no one thing that was driving the increase in inpatients. Outpatient visits were 20-percent above budget. The medical clinics were still operating below budget.
