Clovis hospital seeing fewer COVID-19 patients

CLOVIS — Plains Regional Medical Center hit a milestone on Thursday. For the first time in 300 days, it reported zero hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

“I wrote down that number this (Thursday) morning and I remember thinking ‘I can’t remember writing zero before,’” Hospital Administrator Jorge Cruz said.

“I had to look it up. May 14, 2020, was our first (COVID-19) hospitalization.”

At least one patient has been hospitalized at PRMC with the virus since then, until Thursday.

But Cruz cautioned it’s not yet time to celebrate an end to the year-long pandemic.

“We’re not quite there yet. I know everybody is pushing for that,” he said. “But I do think the way the numbers have been trending the last several weeks - we’ve been in single digits for a while - I am extremely encouraged.”

He said PRMC continues to screen visitors and require masks, but the number of hospital visitors allowed has been increasing for several weeks as the number of COVID-19 cases drops throughout the region.

Curry and Roosevelt counties combined have reported just two virus-related deaths in the month of March. The counties combined have recorded fewer than five new virus-related cases per day this month, compared to 69 per day reported in November.

Clovis went into the weekend with one patient hospitalized with a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Q&A with the administrator

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with the adage that “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Cruz can appreciate that today more than a year ago, when COVID-19 shut down the nation.

Cruz, 45, previously the chief nurse at Plains Regional Medical Center, was forced into an interim role as hospital administrator last July when Drew Dostal resigned. Hospital board members removed the interim from his title two months ago.

He answered a few quick questions Thursday from The News.

Q: Talk about your background and how you came to settle in at PRMC.

Cruz: I’ve been here almost 20 years. My wife and I came here as contract nurses. We thought we were going to work 13 weeks and we’re still here 20 years later.

I am from the East Coast, born in Boston. My dad was military. … My wife is from Eunice, New Mexico. Before we came to Clovis, we lived in Hobbs.

Q: What do you think about when you reflect on all that’s happened since last March?

Cruz: I don’t know that we’ve fully had the opportunity to reflect on last year because obviously COVID is still out there. But when I have the opportunity to think about last year, I think about the response of our team, our hospital, our community. I look at last year and think we’re better for it. It wasn’t fun, but it made our team stronger for sure.

We went through some pretty tough times. Most people would consider us a small hospital with very limited resources. But we were able to do some things in the past year that maybe we couldn’t do before.

Q: Now that the virus isn’t all-consuming, what do you see as the future for Clovis’ hospital?

Cruz: For me, it’s how do we become a one-stop shop. We want to become a hospital that’s able to keep our community members here in Clovis so they don’t have to travel to seek any healthcare services. We want this to be a regional medical center.

Part of that is building our pool of specialists. It’s a process. The most important part of that process is recruitment — trying to get providers, specialists, to come to Clovis. That’s the biggest hurdle we’ve always had.

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