Ohio’s healthcare opening aims to keep public healthy, less at risk for COVID-19

COLUMBUS (WCMH) — While the medical field has been working on overdrive during the pandemic, it’s been very focused on battling COVID-19 and conducting life-saving or necessary procedures.  

Beginning Friday, May 1, some elective surgeries and appointments will once again be available to patients.  

“All health procedures that can be done that do not require an overnight stay in a hospital,” said Gov. Mike DeWine at his Monday news conference. “Dentists, veterinarians should also begin May 1 to be able to be at full steam ahead.” 

The goal with this first phase of reopening the state’s healthcare is to allow Ohioans to start taking care of themselves again – because if people aren’t healthy, they’re at risk.  

“It’s super important for us all to get our basic healthcare maintenance, keep up as healthy as we can because any decrease in your health puts you at risk to getting COVID, another disease, for anything like that,” said Doctor Shay O’Mara, the system chief for trauma surgery for OhioHealth who is also leading up that healthcare system’s surgical lead for back to normal efforts. “So keeping ourselves healthy has got to be really important. And it helps protect everybody around us so we don’t have any more outbreaks or surge.” 

The key with these operations or procedures is they have to be outpatient: no overnight stays in a hospital. O’Mara said that designation is not only to help preserve resources, but also to keep patients in the medical facilities for as short a time as possible to continue minimizing the risk of exposure.  

“There’s a lot of actually very necessary stuff in here. A lot of the orthopedic surgeries such as joint replacements, knee tendons, wrist surgeries, things like that are probably the big bulk of this,” he explained. “But also includes a lot of things like screening tests for cancer screening, endoscopy, bronchoscopy, things that we haven’t been doing because they aren’t an emergency procedure, but we’re not able to diagnose people with things that could be very life threatening down the road.” 

O’Mara and DeWine said one of the biggest concerns for the public has been people putting off doctor appointments or tests or screenings.  

“People were deferring healthcare,” DeWine said. “Sometimes they were deferring healthcare not because of the order but because they were afraid.” 

O’Mara added that our hospitals here in Ohio don’t look like the videos we’ve seen from New York or other hot spot locations around the world.  

“Our hospitals look much better but we need to now have the freedom to bring people in, show them that, and get them what they need,” he said. “That’s what we really need to reassure them: our hospitals have become very safe places, probably safer than we were before because of everything we have implemented.” 

Some physicians are still concerned with the PPE supply. A dentist we spoke with by phone said many items are backordered for weeks, and he said he wouldn’t feel comfortable servicing his patients at this time.  

At Monday’s press conference, DeWine was asked about the PPE concerns and said there is nothing in this announcement that demands physicians to open their doors.  

“We will certainly try to help them with the PPE,” he said. “The choice about going back assuming they have PPE, that choice to go back is certainly theirs. It’s not a requirement for anybody to go back. I understand that someone would not want to do that.” 

“This has been our big conversation the last several weeks: will we have enough?” said O’Mara. “Right now, we have enough. If we don’t get resupplied down the road, if another surge or outbreak were to occur, then we have to watch it really carefully. Which is why it’s such a smart thing to do this in a step-wise fashion. Let’s start with things that aren’t as resource consuming like outpatient surgery and then move towards things that are more resource consuming.” 

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