Missouri healthcare orgs were blindsided by Gov. Parson ending his COVID emergency order

When Susan Klotz heard the governor had announced he would be allowing the COVID-19 state of emergency to expire at midnight on New Year’s Eve, it sent her and her patients into a panic.

Klotz, a family nurse practitioner, started her own clinic in Ash Grove with her husband during the pandemic. To help deal with a healthcare staffing crisis spurred by the coronavirus, the emergency order waived a requirement that nurse practitioners like Klotz practice within 75 miles of their collaborating physician.

With the waiver, Klotz could collaborate with a physician in Columbia, allowing her to see an average of 30 patients a week — many who home visits and a intrathecal baclofen pump to deliver medication directly into their spinal fluid.

With the omicron variant fueling a spike in COVID cases and hospitalizations across the state, Klotz expected the emergency order would be extended, at least temporarily. But the day before the waiver was set to expire, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he decided not to extend it — sending Klotz into a scramble to make sure her patients didn’t lose care.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2022-02-16/missouri-healthcare-orgs-were-blindsided-by-gov-parson-ending-his-covid-emergency-order