Dr. Cody Orders Large SC Co. Hospitals To Expand COVID-19 Testing

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — Santa Clara County’s Dr. Sara Cody issued a health order Wednesday requiring large health care systems to offer COVID-19 testing for patients in high risk categories.

The Health Officer’s order goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

County health officials said the order is a necessary to move to protect all residents.

Under the order, larger health care systems must offer testing for all patients with COVID-19 symptoms, all patients who have come in close contact with a person who tested positive and all patients who are at higher risk of being exposed because they are frontline workers, regularly use public transit or have recently gone to a mass gathering.

Providers who must offer access to testing include acute care hospitals and clinics and urgent care centers operated by organizations that operate an acute care hospital in Santa Clara County or elsewhere.

Clinics and hospitals included in the order are: Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System, El Camino Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, Kaiser Permanente, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Regional Medical Center and Stanford Health Care.

"Just as we expect all health care providers to test their patients for other communicable diseases and conditions that put their heal that risk, healthcare providers need to test their patients for COVID-19," Cody said in a statement.

"Many healthcare providers have already stepped up to meet this expectation, and we are grateful for their partnership," Cody said.

County health officials said the new health order follows state and federal requirements that health insurers cover coronavirus testing for their customers.

While testing has increased recently, far more is needed, health officials said.

Santa Clara County’s COVID-19 testing officer Dr. Marty Fenstersheib said that so far it’s been county-run Valley Medical Center and smaller community clinics who’ve administered most of the testing, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The county wants to test 4,000 people a day. It currently tests around 2,400 according to the report.

“The county can’t do it by itself,” Fenstersheib told The Chronicle.

“The small community clinics can’t do it by themselves, but the large health care centers, large clinics in this county need to step up and help provide additional testing so we can meet our goal.”

But several health care providers say they're already doing what they can to expand COVID-19 testing.

Stanford Health Care issued a statement Thursday saying it doesn’t belong on the list, The San Jose Mercury News reports.

Dr. Christina Kong, the Medical Director of Pathology Service for Stanford Health Care said in the statement that it has taken a leadership role expanding testing capabilities throughout the Bay Area since the onset of the outbreak, according to the report.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, Stanford Medicine has been committed to supporting COVID-19 testing for the greater Bay Area community and to date has partnered with medical facilities across 14 Northern California counties,” Kong’s statement said.

“Within days of our COVID-19 test receiving FDA permission for testing, we made it available to other medical facilities who lacked access to timely testing. As these facilities developed their own COVID-19 testing, we shifted to providing COVID-19 testing to community health clinics, health care workers, first responders, essential workers and congregate living facilities. The ‘COVID-19 Guide for First Responders and Essential Workers’ app was created to facilitate testing. We are also actively working with several skilled nursing facilities in Santa Clara County to provide surveillance testing as recommended by the county.”

Kaiser Permanente, which has about 4.4 Northern California members – nearly a third of all those insured in the region - opened a new Berkeley laboratory earlier this month that it said will double its testing capability to about 6,000 a day according to the report.

Tom Hanenburg, Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s interim president, affirmed the health care provider’s commitment to expanding testing in a written statement, The Chronicle report said.

“We were one of the first health care providers to offer COVID-19 testing starting in early March and we have continuously increased our capacity to expand testing to broader groups,” Hanenburg’s statement said.

“Our ability to expand our testing capacity even further is based on the availability of testing equipment and supplies, and we are working diligently to obtain those, which are in short supply worldwide.”