Newly inducted President and CEO of Owensboro Health Mark Marsh said that on July 7, there were two patients in their hospital with COVID-19. As of Aug. 17 there were 38, he reported Wednesday during an Owensboro Rotary meeting.
Marsh said while treating those patients, OH is also working to get education out about the vaccine and the truth behind it. He said 90% of the patients admitted withCOVID-19 are unvaccinated.
Some residents are also not from the area.
According to Marsh, some of the calls they receive are from places like the Lexington area, Cincinnati and West Virginia. As they are accepting some calls, Marsh said it’s hard to “say selfishly we have to protect our beds.”
As for the workers in the hospital, Marsh said the full staff is around 70% vaccinated. He said that is the result of the education efforts that he has done with the staff in the hospital. When it came to some of the younger nurses, there was a difficulty.
“They’ve been scared for various things such as childbirth and all these other things that come from miseducation,” he said. “We’ve increased the last five days, we got 135 team members vaccinated.”
Marsh said in his role he wants to focus on how the staff works as a unit.
One thing he thinks about is the amount of medical staff that have post-traumatic stress from the last 18 months in the field while providing the community with the best “patient-friendly experience.”
During Marsh’s first 60 days as president/CEO, he has held meetings and conferences with staff, physicians, and community leaders to better understand the organization and how to help lead the team.
Getting plugged in the community has also been an initiative of Marsh’s. When he first came to Owensboro, he was impressed with several facets of the city.
“This is my last move as long as [OHRH] doesn’t run me out,” he said. “I plan to be here for a while, and I really look forward to working with each and every one of these (organizations), so I’m excited about that.”
