Politics

Pardee leaders give state Senate leader assessment of post-storm scenario

UNC Health Pardee President Jay Kirby and Senate leader Phil Berger

By Bill Moss, Published: October 6, 2024

When legislators gather in Raleigh this week to adopt a post-Helene relief package for Western North Carolina, a top leader of the General Assembly will come armed with first-hand reporting at the medical need.

Phil Berger, the leader of the state Senate, and a top deputy, Senate Rules Committee Chair Bill Rabon, and their aides visited UNC Health Pardee on Friday to get a ground-level view of hospitals’ needs amid widespread power and water outages and wreckage of roads and bridges. Pardee President/CEO Jay Kirby and UNC Health CEO A. Wesley Burks met with the legislators, including Sens. Julie Mayfield, D-Asheville, and Tim Moffitt, R-Hendersonville.

“The very first question Sen. Berger asked us as a group was, ‘What can we do to help?’ It’s a really powerful first question,” said John Bryant, Pardee’s vice president for operations and support services.

Three major areas rise to the top, Kirby told Berger, and the first was not even about Pardee.

“In Western North Carolina, Jay shared, we need a strong Mission Health,” Bryant said. “The impact to Mission Health is significant from an infrastructure standpoint and an operational standpoint, recognizing that they're the tertiary hospital for the entire western part of the state. When you think about their ability to provide care in those most acute and significant situations from trauma services, open heart surgery, that element is critical for our region.”

Food distribution, which had been disrupted when the Ingles supermarket chain's massive warehouse in Black Mountain was down, was another urgent need.

“They are the food service provider of scale in Western North Carolina, and knowing that we have to have food and supply stability, along with utilities in the region, is going to be critical to operations moving forward,” Bryant said.

Finally, medical providers and other essential services, can’t operate efficiently if workers are forced to stay home with children.

“Much like Covid, when you have childcare services traditionally provided by the schools come to a halt, then that impacts your workforce and the ability of the workforce to report,” he said. “As we start looking at this period of time, especially over the next several weeks, that is going to be a critical element of stabilization for the region.”

As a former Henderson County schools superintendent, Bryant has made the call on reopening schools — or not — even when main roads are cleared.

“Anytime you talk about transportation, you're thinking about two things: You're thinking about a school bus and you're thinking about a 16-year-old driver. That's how you make an inclement weather call, that's how you make a safe travel call,” he said.

The overall tone of the meeting with high-ranking Senate leaders?

“It was so positive,” Bryant said. “We're so proud of the work that's being done here. Jay has really been inspiring in his attention (to personnel) and his affirmation. Folks during times of crisis show you extraordinary things, and our team here at Pardee has done that. They have answered the bell. They have served the community. They have been unwavering in their attention and diligence and resilience, and so there was a spirit of positivity.

“There’s also a recognition that this is a marathon not a sprint," he added. "The recovery effort is going to be a long haul. Entire communities are going to have to rebuild from the ground up. We have team members and families and extended families who have lost everything. It's going to be a significant time of rebuild, and we're going to have to lock arms and support each other and recognize that just because the weather's nice outside, everything's not okay.”