Our local hospital closed the doors for good last week. Now, we know longer have an ER for our DWI blood draws. I'm scrambling to try to find an alternative. Our local jail has a full time nurse. Does anyone see a downside to getting that nurse to do the draw? We have local nurses that we could contract with to do it but we would need a "sanitary place." Any ideas would be appreciated.

I would think that if the nurse is an RN or LVN and would be available to testify about her/his training and experience in drawing blood, then the nurse should be ok. If Quality Care Plus does go 24 hours a day they might be another alternative.

Doing the draws at the jail is ideal. Speeds up the process. In WC, our sheriff trained medical personnel to be phlebotomists. They use the jail clinic as the sanitary place. Surely, you have a clean room that is used for medical stuff.

I do have a clean room. And don't call me Shirley.

I picked a bad day to give up speed, but that is a nice beaver.

"The jail?! What is it?"

"It's a big building with a lot of prisoners in it, but that's not important right now..."

I understand your problem has been solved with the Hospital District becoming the owner of the hospital corporation, an undisclosed person or entity becoming the owner of the hospital building, and a private corporation becoming the manager of the hospital, with the facilities to reopen this week.