MARSHALL — The search continues for a new regional president and CEO of the Avera Marshall region, but interim regional co-presidents and CEOs Curt Hohman and Mark Vortherms hope to choose finalists by the end of the month.

During a Avera Marshall virtual update held Thursday, Hohman and Vortherms said several candidates applied and interviewed for the position. They plan to narrow down the list of candidates by next week. Hohman added the plan would be to have the CEO available by the beginning of February.

“We had a tremendous amount of candidates apply for the position. I think that is complimentary to the organization but also the community of Marshall that we had so many excellent candidates for the position,” Hohlman said. “It was a national search and we got a lot of feedback from people within Avera Marshall, some leaders within the community as far as what background we should looking for and what leadership skills and personality characteristics everyone is looking for.

“We have an interview team at Avera of six executives along with our board chair Doug Olsem. They have interviews on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and they were going to potentially identify out of that pool who our three finalists would be. If everything goes to plan, we hope to have those finalists here on site before Christmas but with logistics and schedules it might also happen after the first of the year but that’s the goal.”

Hohman and Vortherms also provided an update on the response against the COVID-19 pandemic. Vortherms said while they’ve been able to see a plateauing locally over the past couple of weeks, cases continue to rise across the region and state and ICU beds remain limited and staffing is tight.

“We feel grateful that we’re maybe starting to see a little bit of a plateauing over the past week or two. I will say even with that plateauing, cases of virus have been steady and significantly increased through the month of November across the area and certainly across the Midwest,” Vortherms said. “Our local hospital has been very busy with COVID, all Avera hospitals have been extremely busy and the Minnesota hospitals have continued to be very busy. What we’ve seen across the system whether that be Minnesota or Avera Health systems, ICU beds continue to be very limited and staffing is tight.”

Vortherms said currently, there are 262 in-patients who have COVID across the Avera system and praised the efforts of their staff for their ability to work where help is needed the most and sometimes in areas they are not well-versed in.

“That’s one area that Curt and I and the rest of the leadership team at Avera couldn’t be prouder of the way our employees have responded to the needs of the community for our patients and residents. We’ve had numerous nurses that have volunteered to work extra so we can have additional staff and we can take care of the community. We’ve had nurses working in the hospital that have floated over to the nursing home, we’ve had surge techs helping out on in patient floors, our maintenance staff has been outstanding moving beds and equipment wherever needed. We’ve had a number of leaders who have volunteered to help out in the nursing home because we’ve had needs there and the one thing that’s been great is just the teamwork. The areas that they’ve gone to, those individuals have been welcomed, the individuals that have worked in the areas where they haven’t historically worked have felt very positive about the experience.”

Hohman also said they are continuing to make safety improvements to the facility to combat COVID, including implementing ionizing equipment throughout the ductwork to help break down the bacteria and eliminate the virus.

“We are continuing our safety improvements to the facility when it comes to COVID. In November, Kevin Schroeder our director of maintenance, kind of discovered this product of an ionization equipment that you can put in the ductwork that frankly kills the COVID virus and bacteria and essentially breaks down proteins in those organisms and rendering them harmless. We have those ionizers in the emergency department, throughout the nursing home and in the clinics and we are basically adding those on a weekly basis to all areas of the organizations. It will be within Marshall but in Tyler and Granite Falls and it will be about a $60,000 investment to use that equipment but anything that we can do to make our building that much safer, we’ll do and we’re very happy that Kevin found this equipment for us and it will be implemented throughout Avera.”

Another service that can be taken advantage of through Avera is its at-home care program that allows patients to communicate over the phone or through a video chat with a home care nurse each day. Hohman said since April 1, they’ve have 2,000 patients enrolled in the program and that Avera Marshall is the fourth-highest community in terms of amount of patients served.

“There are a lot of people at home who are COVID positive or with COVID symptoms and it can exacerbate issues and make for a very challenging time. We have created this program that started in April as soon as COVID hit where we’ll have a home care nurse contact a person who enrolls in the program on a daily basis. It can be over the phone, we set it up on video with the AveraNow app that’s a video visit and that nurse really asks questions about how patients are doing and if they have COVID-related symptoms are they really monitoring that closely,” Hohman said. “Right now we’re at a peak of about 600 patients who are enrolled in the service, so there are phone calls and video visits going to those patients every day. We’ve really gotten great feedback, they don’t have to go into the hospital or the clinic and can stay at home but yet can still get that care from a nurse and if additional interventions need to be made, that can be done. That kind of monitoring has made people feel a lot more secure that they’re getting their health care while they’re still at home.”