NEW: Ballad Health to resume certain non-emergent, elective procedures beginning next Monday

Ballad Health is set to resume performing non-emergent elective procedures beginning next Monday.

Chief Operating Officer Eric Deaton made that announcement during Ballad’s weekly media briefing on Wednesday, citing a sharp decline in the number of COVID-19 patients in house over the last 10 days that has allowed them to start scheduling procedures again.

Ballad will begin with outpatient procedures before moving to surgeries that require an overnight stay, then those that require a long term stay. Ballad had previously halted all elective procedures on Dec. 7 because of the rapid rise of COVID-19 patients that were being treated across Ballad’s hospitals.

Also starting Thursday, the healthcare provider will allow two visitors at a time in any inpatient room expect for those in long-term care, behavioral health, or pediatric and NICU units.

And some other news Ballad provided Wednesday was that after six weeks of providing support at testing and urgent care sites as well as bedside care, the provider will wind down utilizing the National Guard across its facilities by the end of this week.