Rural hospitals taking drastic steps to get supplies amid coronavirus outbreak

Small rural hospitals are resorting to buying protective face masks from hardware stores and borrowing sterile gowns from dentists' offices as suppliers allocate resources for those directly affected by the coronavirus, The Washington Post reported

Medical supply distributors have frozen shipments, and supplies have been on back order as the coronavirus outbreak spreads across the U.S., and small hospitals are already reporting that they're running out of protective masks and gowns. 

Alison Page, CEO of Baldwin, Wis.-based Western Wisconsin Health, told the Post that her husband had to bring in spare sterile gowns from a local dentist office and another person brought in gowns donated by a local veterinarian. 

Leaders from community hospitals in Texas, told the Post that they had to go to local hardware stores to buy N95 protective masks, which protect healthcare workers from airborne virus transmission. 

"The hospital having masks to protect my employees from other sicknesses is more important than people mowing their yards right now," Adam Willmann, CEO of  Clifton, Texas-based Goodall-Witcher Healthcare, told the Post

Read the full article here

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