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Barbara McDonald, APRN, pauses for a moment between patients during drive-through COVID-19 evaluations April 9 in Texarkana. Image by Bryan Clifton

UAMS Takes Drive-Through COVID-19 Evaluation to Texarkana

April 10, 2020 | UAMS provided drive-through COVID-19 evaluations in Texarkana, Arkansas, on April 9, the second time UAMS has done so beyond its main campus, proving the sequel was as good as the original.

Teams of physicians and nurses from the main campus in Little Rock and from UAMS Family Medical Center in Texarkana joined together at Trinity Baptist Church there and were ready by 10 a.m. when local patients drove under a covered area in front of the church.

COVID-19 is caused by a new respiratory virus that has the potential for severe illness and pneumonia in some people. Symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath.

In four hours, the UAMS team had screened more than 100 patients, a total comparable to that at the first drive-through evaluations done in Helena the week before.

“It was a great event and scores of people came out,” said Jennifer Hunt, M.D., chair of the UAMS Department of Pathology and director of the UAMS Triage Unit that led the effort in both cities. “We had great volunteers from the Texarkana crew. It was a successful day.”

One adjustment to the process was the use of iPads to enter patient information rather than laptops on rolling carts that were used in Helena. Hunt said that change helped to speed up the traffic flow at the Texarkana drive-through.

As residents in their vehicles waited in line at the Texarkana church, they were asked to phone the call center at UAMS in Little Rock to register and get entered into the computer system, if they weren’t already a UAMS patient.

Once they were seen by one of the nurses, they entered into the service area in front of the church to be asked a series of screening questions by one of the UAMS physicians on site. Their condition and answers determined if they needed testing, performed by experienced nurses who obtain a specimen with a swab of the back part of the nose. .

The UAMS team then took these tests back to UAMS for processing and follow-up with the patients with their results in a couple of days. No patient had to get out of their vehicle, and all the screeners were equipped and wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, eye protection, gloves and disposable medical gowns.

“We’re reaching even more people with this mobile outreach, people we normally wouldn’t see at the main campus,” said Barbara McDonald, APRN, a nurse practitioner in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Neurology and a volunteer team lead of the UAMS Triage Unit. “It gives UAMS a bigger presence, and we’re serving those who may not be able to get tested because they didn’t have access.”

Other UAMS physicians working alongside Hunt were Matthew Nix, M.D., an associate professor in the UAMS College of Medicine and medical director for the UAMS Family Medical Center in Texarkana, and Russell Mayo, M.D., Residency Program director for UAMS Southwest Regional Campus in Texarkana and chief medical officer for UAMS Regional Campuses.

“I think this drive-through means that UAMS is trying to take care of all the citizens of the state, not just those in central Arkansas around the main campus,” Nix said. “That’s an important message. They’ve done this in Little Rock screening thousands of patients and have an efficient, scientifically driven protocol that they are using while they increase access to testing.”

Destiny Carter, a recruiting specialist at UAMS Southwest Regional Campus in Texarkana, Arkansas, also played a key role in doing the groundwork necessary for the drive-through evaluations.

“For us the main thing was finding an ideal location,” Carter said. “Once we were able to do that, the other things quickly fell into place. The folks at Trinity have been wonderful to us. They were eager to help. The City of Texarkana, Arkansas, was a tremendous help in spreading word of mouth.”