The Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services of St. Joseph County (CMH) has a staff member on 14-day quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 recently. CMH Chief Finance Officer Cameron Bullock confirmed the case on Friday, although he said, “I am not 100 percent positive when the case was found out. I was only made aware of it Monday.”
A source who wished to remain anonymous provided a tip to Watershed Voice, alleging that CMH staff, clients, and others were not notified of the exposure. Bullock said, “To kind of give you a perspective, it’s almost like the hospital. Every time that we have a person that’s in the hospital that has COVID, they don’t go through and tell people, ‘hey, nurse A was working with this person.’”
The U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) protects patient privacy and requires agencies like CMH to keep the infected staff member’s information anonymous. “Just like everything else with HIPAA, it’s very hard to say (someone) has positive COVID, now we need to tell everybody,” Bullock said.
“That violates their rights as well, but we as an agency are going through and making sure that the areas are clean and that the person that was affected, their areas are clean and taken care of.” Bullock said the infected staff member’s office “was sprayed down and disinfected. The person themselves was sent home for a 14-day quarantine as per the CDC recommendations.”
However, Bullock said there is also no anonymous procedure in place at CMH to notify anyone they might have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
Instead, the agency follows guidelines from the Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency (BHSJ) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for cleaning and sanitizing the facility. “We’re following the local health department’s guidelines. (CMH Chief Executive Officer Kristine) Kirsch has been in contact with them, and we’re following their recommendations and answering any questions that they have,” Bullock said.
“We’ve done COVID-19 training. In our public areas, people are supposed to be wearing masks when they’re going through the hallways. We have the one-way arrows. All of our high touch areas like the doorknobs, the entryways, that type of thing, those are cleaned daily.”
There are also other masking rules in place. “Let’s say that person was working with a consumer, you know we have people from the public. If they were in their office, and there’s someone else in there, they’re both supposed to be wearing a mask. If you’re in your office by yourself, then obviously you don’t have to, because you’re by yourself,” Bullock said. In any space at the CMH facility, he said if people are “not maintaining six feet, we have a policy that says they are supposed to be wearing a mask.”
Periodically, there are also other, broader measures. “Some of the other precautions we’re taking here, every 90 days, so the next one’s going to be coming up on September 25, is we close down the entire agency and we do a fogging of the entire building, which is supposed to help the COVID spread,” Bullock said.
BHSJ Health Officer Rebecca Burns said, “I have nursing staff that work on the daily, positive cases, and if as they were working on a case, they needed to notify an employer, they would have done that. What steps the employer takes at that point is up to them, but I am not aware of any specific details about Community Mental Health.”
Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.
