St. Peter’s Health

Bills before the legislature would license community health workers and make it easier for some other health professionals licensed in other states to do business in Montana.

As COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide decline, at least one hospital has moved away from rationing care. But many large hospitals are still struggling with patient loads and staffing.

The Montana State News Bureau first reported in October that St. Peter’s Health said three public officials harassed and threatened its providers when doctors declined a patient’s request for a treatment not authorized for use against COVID-19.

State Attorney General Austin Knudsen sent a Montana Highway Patrol trooper to St. Peter’s Health in Helena in mid-October after a COVID-19 patient and her family were denied ivermectin as a treatment. MTPR's Freddy Monares spoke with the Montana State News Bureau’s Holly Michels about the story.

“Everybody is hard-up for concentrators. We have never run into this kind of shortage. We’ve been sending people home with these oxygen concentrators in record numbers and it’s stressed our supply.”

Montana hospitals and clinics are tightening their visitation policies to protect patients and staff as cases of the delta variant continue to mount. Officials at a Helena hospital say frustrated visitors are leading to unprecedented levels of hostility directed at staff.

Dr. Shelly Harkins, the president and chief medical officer of Helena’s Saint Peter’s Health made this sobering announcement Thursday morning: “For the first time in my career we are at the point where not every patient in need will get the care we might wish we could give,” she says.

The Montana Nurses Association and St. Peter's Health based in Helena have ratified a collective bargaining contract for more than 300 nurses in the area.

Ten large Montana hospitals this week are beginning to vaccinate frontline health care workers against COVID-19. The shot won’t be mandatory at one Helena hospital, which still expects most of its employees to get vaccinated.

COVID-19 cases are surging in rural places across the Mountain States and Midwest, and when it hits health care workers, ready reinforcements aren’t easy to find.