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Law360 (September 14, 2020, 4:08 PM EDT) -- A Louisiana health care system is facing more than $13,000 in proposed penalties after federal investigators found it had not provided employees with the necessary personal protective equipment to guard against COVID-19, the U.S. Department of Labor said.
In one of only a handful of citations it has issued since the beginning of the pandemic, the Department of Labor announced that investigators with its Occupational Safety and Health Administration had found that Christus Shreveport-Bossier Health System in Shreveport, Louisiana, violated workplace safety protocols and put employees at risk of COVID-19 exposure.
"OSHA opened a coronavirus-related investigation after receiving reports of employee exposure," the Department of Labor said Thursday in a press release. "The agency found that emergency facility employees often shared used protective gowns or did not have protective gowns to wear while treating patients."
Christus Shreveport-Bossier Health System, which has 1,800 employees and is part of the Texas-based Christus Health system of more than 600 facilities, must now pay the federal government $13,494 in penalties or dispute the findings.
"Employers, especially those within the health care industry, must comply with existing standards to help ensure workers' safety amidst the coronavirus pandemic," Roderic M. Chube, area director for OSHA Baton Rouge, said in the Christus Shreveport-Bossier Health System announcement. "Health care workers must be provided proper personal protective equipment to limit the spread of the virus."
Katy Kiser, a spokesperson for Christus Health, told Law360 by email Friday, "We are actively contesting the citation and the penalty."
"We have worked hard to secure the PPE we have needed to get us through many phases of the pandemic and maintain a local contingency supply of at least 10 days," Christus Health said in a statement. "To date, we have experienced no gaps in PPE supply during pandemic response."
In its statement, the health system attributed the OSHA complaint to "an associate" who "felt they had not received proper training on appropriate utilization of PPE. We immediately responded by providing more training."
The health system added, "Our top priority at Christus Shreveport-Bossier is providing the highest quality care to our patients as we also care for our associates."
In April, OSHA said it would ramp up enforcement after criticism that it was not adequately investigating COVID-19 complaints.
OSHA still did not issue its first COVID-19-related citation until late May, despite having received more than 4,500 complaints. That citation was against a Georgia nursing home that was found to have not immediately reported the hospitalizations of infected workers.
The agency issued more citations in July to a set of nursing homes owned by an Ohio-based health care company.
The Christus Shreveport-Bossier Health System action came amid a series of COVID-19 citations.
Also Thursday, the Department of Labor announced it had fined Smithfield Packaged Meats Corp. in South Dakota $13,494 after nearly 1,300 employee coronavirus infections and four deaths.
And on Friday, the agency said it had cited Hackensack Meridian Health and CarePlus Bergen Inc. in New Jersey for issues with respirators, and JBS Foods Inc. in Colorado for failing to prevent general coronavirus hazards.
--Additional reporting by Braden Campbell and Hailey Konnath. Editing by Stephen Berg.
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