Mason Health adopts 'middle-of-the-road' mask policy

Two airliners per day of COVID deaths in U.S.

Matt Baide | Mar 30, 20230

The COVID-19 pandemic began three years ago, and the last remnants of the pandemic era restrictions are set to end next week throughout the state.

The mask mandate will end at Mason Health and Mason General Hospital on April 3, as directed by the state Department of Health to end the statewide mask order. Employees who interact with patients will still be required to wear masks while in the facilities, according to Mason Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dean Gushee.

“Mason (Health) is taking a more middle-of-the-road kind of position on this where we do think there’s still value in masks with respect to protecting our patients,” Gushee said. “When everybody in the world was masked up, there was a rationale to say we should be masking up also to protect our staff, but because the staff can now, and do, of course for the most part, go out into the world without a mask, wearing a mask at work doesn’t do very much as far as protecting them. But there is still value we think in protecting patients so our view of the masking issue is that we will require masking when you’re in the midst of a patient encounter, a patient interaction so when providers or nurses go into a room to care for a patient, they will be required to wear a mask. If we have other staff members who are directly interacting with patients as part of their job, say escorting them in close proximity to another part of the building, they’ll wear a mask. But otherwise, when we’re not around patients, like in our own offices or walking in the hallways where direct encounters are much less likely and certainly not very intensive or in the cafeteria, things of that sort, we’re not going to mandate masking.”

Gushee made it clear that patients and visitors will not be required to wear a mask in Mason Health facilities, although they are encouraged to, particularly if they have symptoms of a respiratory ailment. He said without the mandate, they can’t do much around that and trying to police masking within the facility would be difficult to accomplish.

The state Department of Health still recommends masking for patients, health care providers and visitors to health care settings.

The masking protocols are modified from the pre-pandemic era, with masking required sparingly for instances of patient isolation for communicable diseases.

“This is a more intensive masking approach,” Gushee said. “With good science now, we always knew wearing a mask helps prevent your average person riding on an airplane or something and wearing a mask is a way to not get a cold. This is also a way to protect patients so it’s really all about protecting patients. COVID is still out there, it’s not like it has gone away so we still do need to pay attention to it.”

A consensus statement for continued masking in acute care and outpatient clinic settings was released by 13 medical officers and doctors, stating they will continue with masking past April 3, which includes Kaiser Permanente and MultiCare Health System in Olympia, St. Michael’s Medical Center in Bremerton as part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles.

“In light of the current situation and local, state and federal guidance, as an acute care and outpatient clinic facilities, our organizations will continue to require masking in patient care areas and strongly recommend or require in public spaces,” the statement reads.

Gushee said they considered keeping the mask mandate in place. Mason Health’s infection prevention and employee health and safety program coordinator Kimberly Cooper said they are going to keep masks available to the public and employees who want to mask up in Mason Health facilities.

“The pandemic has ended politically, COVID has not went away,” Cooper said. “It’s still out in the community. We still have employees who are out occasionally because of COVID. It has decreased and is more controlled in how people get it and the severity of illness but it is definitely still out there.”

According to the state Department of Health data dashboard, there were 53 cases per 100,000 people in Mason County for the last week of data from March 6 to 13, which is considered substantial community transmission, and 6% of hospital beds were occupied by COVID patients.

“Not locally, but nationally, the statistics I’ve most recently seen, the number of deaths occurring every day is roughly the equivalent of two airliners going down,” Gushee said. “So it does not have minor impact. The reason that the death rate isn’t as high as it was is because of all those precautions that we took. I think this is an important point that people don’t recognize is that things like the vaccine was never intended to prevent you from getting the disease, but it was intended to prevent you from dying or getting put on a ventilator or being admitted to a hospital so it clearly has done that. The disease is still out there, two airliners a day nationwide is not a minor impact.”