FISHERS, Ind. — Six months in to the COVID-19 pandemic, some who live in Fishers say they’ve had concerns about testing turnaround time within the Fishers Health Department.
Fishers City Councilwoman Jocelyn Vare said she took a test so she could visit her elderly father.
“I just wanted that confidence before I went to visit him,” said Vare.
Vare was tested on July 17. She received a confirmation that her results would be ready in three days, but said she didn’t receive her negative results until 12 days later and no one from the health department contacted her about the delay.
"Some folks that were tested on July 20, as of today are still waiting for results,” said Vare.
Monica Heltz, public health director of the Fishers Health Department, which was established in April, said testing delays aren’t just a local problem - it’s a national one.
“When we started seeing a little bit of a lag in our results, we let people know about other available testing options and the closest one to us is Riverview,” said Heltz.
According to Brandy Hill, director of marketing and public relations at Riverview Health, last week the federal government diverted a majority of testing supplies from there to southern states to handle larger outbreaks.
Riverview Health will only provide testing to emergency room or urgent care patients who are admitted to the hospital or those who meet “specific clinical criteria.”
The concern is, could more burden be placed on the Fishers Heath Department?
“We started pursuing other options as far as pressing our laboratory, keeping the lab in Indianapolis versus having them sent out to one of the reference labs, looking at other community partners that we could develop to have alternate testing sites, and trying to keep our residents apprised of the situation as much as we know it ourselves,” said Heltz.
Heltz said COVID-19 tests go through Mid America Clinical Laboratories, an Indiana-based laboratory.
"They have several reference labs, so they use Quest, which is a reference lab. They have to triage some of their results and send them out to some of their reference lab sites, which could be all over the country," said Heltz.
Until quicker results are achieved, Heltz said she recently began providing video updates to share information with the public. She said she’s equally frustrated with the testing delay and is working on preventing it from happening in the future.
“Please know that as soon as we get your results, we’re going to be calling you if you’re positive to try to figure out who your contacts are so that we can notify them as soon as possible,” said Heltz.
Vare said communication is key.
"I would suggest that our Fishers Health Department should have reached out to those individuals that were in the logjam and waiting for results, but frankly with an apology because this is a very stressful situation. People are not taking test without some sort of motivation and stress of wanting to know their status and to have that delayed is very stressful in an already stressful environment," said Vare.