CONCORD, N.H. – At the Department of Health and Human Services in Concord, employees and members of the New Hampshire National Guard have been packing and tracking tens of thousands of COVID-19 testing kits since April.
“They packed 30,000 kits during the month of July,” said Jill Power, a DHHS employee who oversees the kit area and the data entry. “I honestly don’t know what we would have done without them.”
So far, it’s been an incredibly fulfilling experience for New Hampshire’s Citizen-Soldiers and -Airmen.
“This has been my fulltime job for over a hundred days straight,” said Spc. David Ricard, a carpentry and masonry specialist with the 160th Engineer Detachment. “It’s allowed me to create relationships with the people here and experience all of the positive changes and growth in this mission firsthand. What they are using to talk about COVID in the news is coming directly from something I touched.”
Once packed, the testing kits are sent out across the Granite State. When they return to the lab, the next phase of work begins. DHHS employees and Guard members input the essential patient information into the lab information management system (LIMS). The entire process is an ever-moving highway of technicians, medics and department specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“The initial information gets the tests off the ground so they can be sent to the lab and followed up with when the testing is done,” Ricard said. “We enter all of the data from about 400 requisition forms per day to upwards of 1,200.”
A few Guard members have been in charge of tracking the tests through the system and completing follow up information. They plug in the doctor, patient demographics and any other pertinent details.
“We had 1,000 tests coming in a day,” said Ricard, motioning to two computers set up in a small office. “They do the testing much faster than we can input the follow-up information, so at times we had upwards of 2,000 to 3,000 follow-ups to complete.”
At the start of the pandemic relief mission, the Guard members arrived at DHHS to help with just data input and analysis. Now, they assist at every step of the way.
“They have been an immense help,” Power said. “With everything from sales force inventory to labeling thousands and thousands of test tubes.”