Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order Wednesday allowing for the redistribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) to areas of the highest need and mandating hospitals, manufacturers and other facilities to submit current inventory quantities.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency will then relocate PPE to areas deemed most in need. PEMA also will make arrangements with other commonwealth agencies to reimburse facilities for PPE and other supplies and equipment.

“It will help us make use of every ventilator, every piece of personal protective equipment and every bed,” Wolf said. “I want to reiterate that the best way to assist our health care system during this pandemic is to do everything we can to prevent the spread.”

Tammy May, Butler Health System's representative for the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, said while PPE shortages are a real problem affecting many hospitals statewide, Butler is in a different set of circumstances.

“We hear about the horror stories of Philadelphia and even New York,” May said. “Butler is in a pretty good place in comparison with our colleagues across the state.”

May said the hospital has adequate levels of PPE. She credits the hospital's use of PAPR respirators for most of its staff. PAPR stands for powered, air-purifying respirator. These type of respirators are cleanable and reusable.

May said some departments use N95 masks, which are in short supply across the country. She said the N95 masks need to be fitted to the individuals, which causes problems with reuse. She said using PAPR respirators in applicable situations has saved BHS a lot of headaches.

“I can't complain with the PPE situation at Butler (Memorial) Hospital,” May said. “They do have us protected at this point.”

PASNAP conducted a virtual news conference Wednesday to promote a petition it plans to send to Congress regarding shortage concerns. It also was an opportunity for union leaders to voice frustration with some hospitals' policies to conserve supplies.“After 30 years at the bedside, I've been instructed to do what I would never do normally,” said Maureen May, president of PASNAP and a nurse at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.Amy Monday, the union representative for ACMH, said the Armstrong County hospital has seen these types of policies. She said conservation strategies are putting staff and patients at risk.“I'm wearing that mask all day long,” Monday said. “We're just using the same thing now. We're just going room to room.“They're doing this because they're trying to conserve the PPE,” she said. “Normally if you would have done that you would have been fired.”BHS spokeswoman Jana Panther said she could not comment on Wolf's latest order, but she said the system continues to encourage donations of PPE.People wishing to donate supplies, especially personal protective equipment, may arrange it through covid19donations@butlerhealthsystem.org.

While PPE levels are good, testing has been an area in flux for BHS over the past week.According to BHS CEO Ken DeFurio, the hospital's lab has been doing on-site testing since last week, having bought a new machine that was recently FDA-approved. He said testing materials that fit this machine have been scarce.“Given this severe constraint, and only a few test kits being available, on-site tests are for hospitalized patients only, at the discretion of a hospital physician specialist,” DeFurio said.DeFurio said administrators are working toward increasing capacity for on-site testing by finding more testing materials for the machine.“However, every lab in the country is doing the same,” he said. “Instruments and supplies are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.”Panther said people should not confuse the hospital's on-site testing with its outdoor testing facility, which uses a commercial lab called Quest to produce results. The tests done at the outdoor facility are taken to a regional lab in Pittsburgh, but it too is having some newfound difficulties.Panther said Quest's Pittsburgh lab has begun receiving tests beyond the Greater Pittsburgh area, which is beginning to overwhelm the lab's capacity.“Any patient referred for COVID-19 testing must be symptomatic and have a prescription from a doctor,” Panther said. “Resulting time is increasing significantly due to demand exceeding capacity at commercial labs. Results may take a week or more.”

In addition to the governor's latest order, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine unveiled a new “dashboard” that will provide the public with additional county-based information about hospital usage.The “Hospital Preparedness Dashboard,” is available in the COVID-19 section of health.pa.gov. The information includes a county-by-county breakdown of available and in-use beds and ventilators within facilities.As of today, Butler County has nine adult ICU beds available; 67 available medical/surgical beds and three available airborne isolation room beds.The data also show that the county has 26 ventilators available; one ventilator in use for a COVID-19 patient; and six ventilators listed as in-use for non-COVID-19 patients.Levine said she is seeing good signs as the state's raw data comes in each day.“We have seen a subtle flattening of the curve, which is good news,” Levine said. “We are still seeing though significant increases. Today it was over 1,600 cases, but the curve is flatter.”