Piedmont Newton Hospital, Employer of the Year

Employer of the Year: Piedmont Newton

CEO: Staff was ‘incredible at what they do’ during pandemic

By TOM SPIGOLON

tspigolon@covnews.com

David Kent said the Piedmont Newton Hospital staff he leads has been “truly heroic” during the pandemic.

Kent, who is chief executive officer of The Covington News’ 2021 Employer of the Year, said the medical facility on U.S. Highway 278 has seen both the good and bad effects of the yearlong COVID-19 pandemic.

“On the one hand, it’s been a difficult and challenging year, not just because of taking care of COVID patients. That has been difficult,” he said.

“But the fear and uncertainty about what the pandemic will bring, the application it will have on the hospital and all our community and on our own staff family. It’s been trying and difficult to manage through,” Kent said.

“On the other side of the coin, it’s those conditions — difficult, uncertain and challenging — that really creates an environment for people to be really incredible at what it is they do.

“So, as difficult as it’s been, the term ‘health care heroes’ has been used pretty liberally across the country and the world. But, I can honestly tell you that the people that we have in the hospital have been truly heroic,” he said.

Kent served as a top executive for Cancer Treatment Centers of America before joining Piedmont Healthcare’s Newton County hospital in April 2020 — about a month after the pandemic began in earnest in Metro Atlanta.

Patient demand for COVID services at Piedmont Newton went through three “peaks” and four “valleys” — sharp increases and sharp declines — during the course of the pandemic, he said.

“We’re still seeing COVID patients obviously at the hospital but the overall number of COVID patients is just relatively low for us right now,” he said in late March of this year.

One example of how hospital staff members made him proud during the pandemic was the way they shifted to a different routine of working, such as putting in extra time to clean the facility, he said.

“Change is hard sometimes,” Kent said. “They

decided they wanted to help.”

He said he was “grateful and thankful” for his nursing staff, including those who volunteered to take the then-new Pfizer vaccine in December.

However, he also said the “health care story” of the pandemic is the community pulling together to help its residents get through the economic and social effects of the disease.

Newton County’s business and religious communities were among those that combined efforts to support the hospital workers with things like free meals, cards, letters and gifts, Kent said.

The experience of treating a previously unknown disease will only slightly affect how Piedmont Newton will operate in the future because of its vast experience with other communicable diseases, he said.

“I do think that COVID is here to stay. We’ll deal with COVID ongoingly as part of our normal operations,” he said.

“We’re really treating it now as a routine illness. It’s just another communicable illness that we treat in a community,” Kent said.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is we deal with a lot of other infectious and communicable diseases all day long. Flu is the biggest one. It’s seasonal, we prepare for it, we know what’s coming.”

He said he believed COVID-19 “will come and go” in the future.

“It will dissipate and then spread over time. I don’t think it will really go away,” he said.

“Hopefully, as more and more of our residents, especially in Newton County, get the vaccine there will be a direct proportional impact on how many COVID patients we’re seeing at any given time.”

He said what is unknown is if a fourth COVID-19 wave is coming, as well as its timing and size.

As a result, he said there is “just a little bit of a race” between people getting vaccinated and the new variants of the disease — such as from the U.K. and Brazil — spreading among the population.

“What we know is that the vaccine does a fairly good job against the variants, preventing fairly severe COVID. The more people that get vaccinated in a community, the less of an impact it will have on the health care system as a whole,” Kent said.

He said he saw CDC data recently that showed more than seven of 10 people above the age of 65 have received at least the first dose of the vaccine in the U.S.

“Not always, but that seems to be the population that gets the sickest from COVID. I think that’s an encouraging sign that our elderly, most vulnerable population are getting the vaccine and that will have an overall positive impact on the spread of the illness, and the severity of the illness,” Kent said.

In the future, the hospital’s leadership is “going to do what we have always done which is to assess the needs of the community for all health care services, not just COVID services, and grow and expand those services to meet that need,” Kent said.

“What that will look like for Piedmont Newton Hospital will be more physicians, expanded service lines, and more offerings for the community to get care right here at home,” he said.

Kent said data shows “too many” Newton residents leave the county for their health care.

“Our job as a hospital, and with our primary care networks and our specialty physicians, is to grow those services to meet the community so they don’t have to leave.”

He said that will mean Piedmont will increase the employment levels within the county’s health care sector — both with additional medical personnel and support staff.

The hospital also is “looking at different options to renovate” the facility “to allow for more patients to access us,” Kent said.

Kent said an example of using its existing space in a different way came during the height of the pandemic when it was able to add 12 patient beds by opening an inpatient unit in a formerly vacant area.

Piedmont Newton also “potentially” may expand its facilities on U.S. Highway 278 in Covington beyond its current 103-bed limit, he said.

He said he believed 103 beds are not adequate to serve a community the size of Newton County.

“I think that’s likely several years out, but definitely meets the needs at some point to expand our facility,” Kent said.

Piedmont Newton CEO David Kent has voiced his appreciation for a hard-working staff during the pandemic. (Special to The News)