BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — Med Center health has partnered with community organizations to provide cleaning technology, in efforts to combat the coronavirus. 

When the virus first appeared in the community, Eric Hagan,  Vice President of Rural Hospitals for Med Center Health, said he saw a trend of people coming in when they were a lot sicker due to the concerns of the virus. 

“In the beginning, there was a tremendous fear especially if people thought that if people that were sick that had the coronavirus were going to the hospital. There was an extreme fear for other patients to come in for the things that they needed done as well,” says Hagan. 

In efforts to make people feel safe to come into the hospital, Hagan worked with local organizations, including the Laura Goad Turner Charitable Foundation. Hagan says rural hospitals tend to struggle with access to high-end technologies. Waiting around for federal and state funding, the hospital took it upon itself to provide a solution to the deadly virus, partnering with the foundation to provide, the Moonbeam 3 Disinfection System, which provides an umbrella of intense UV-C light to weaken and damage the DNA found in organisms like the coronavirus. “Unfortunately the federal funding and the state funding that was coming out it was a little bit slower as far as getting it distributed in the very beginning and the fortunate part with the foundation was they were able to move quickly and so they offered to give us some grant money to buy a UV-C machine,” says Hagan. 

The UV-C technology can be found at the Med Center Health in Bowling Green, as well as in all of the rural locations, including Med Center Health of Scottsville, Franklin, Albany, and Caverna. The machine can clean a room in less than 30 minutes, and hospitals have gone from a 95% clean positivity rating to a 98% clean positivity rating. The machine is not only taken into rooms where the virus was present but is also used in all discharge rooms and housekeeping facilities. Hagan says this technology helps keep both patents and staff safe. “We want to make sure that they feel comfortable coming into a safe environment and not just them, but our staff. We want to make sure they feel comfortable coming into work as well,” says Hagan.