Sen. Kevin Corbin
A regional medical center is receiving some help in its hour of need, thanks to an area politician.
State Sen. Kevin Corbin, R-Macon, has been able to facilitate a testing tent and extra staff for Erlanger Western Carolina in Murphy.
The help comes as Erlanger and many other hospitals are dealing with an influx of patients due to the Delta variant.
“I got a call from basically a constituent who said, ‘Erlanger is overrun. They’re having trouble getting people in for testing, just having trouble getting people into the hospital,’” Corbin explained.
Corbin said he was able to facilitate the help for Erlanger through work with State Sen. Jim Burgin, who is the head of the Senate Health Committee.
In turn, Burgin put Corbin into contact with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
“I hooked them up with the administration at Erlanger and they provided them with a tent for patient testing, so they can do it outside and people can drive up to do that,” Corbin said.
Additionally, Corbin addressed the funds he was able to secure to hire temporary help for Erlanger to ease the strain on the hospital staff.
“We asked for and received emergency funding, so they’re able to hire temporary nurses,” Corbin said. “Erlanger told me, ‘We have available rooms, but we don’t have staff to be able to accept more people.’
“That’s why they weren’t able to accept more patients, so we got them emergency funding so they can accept more patients, and a lot of these patients are from Graham County; mostly Graham and Cherokee (counties).”
He said the emergency funding was not a fixed amount, but was based off the hospital’s needs.
“I think we’re going to allocate what they need,” Corbin said. “I don’t think there’s a dollar (amount) on that.” ”Hopefully they can get over this hump soon.”
Erlanger could not be reached for comment by Wednesday’s press deadline.