Madison-area hospitals nearing capacity as COVID-19 cases surge

[milestogo]

MADISON (WKOW) -- Wisconsin recorded more than 4,500 new cases of COVID-19 Friday, and the Wisconsin Hospital Association said 1,457 patients were hospitalized with the virus. That's the highest number since Dec. 15, 2020. Hospitals in Madison said the latest virus surge is taxing their resources and forcing hospital leaders to consider operational plans for if the surge continues.

"Our COVID case numbers are going up, our hospital's full [and] we're challenged with capacity," Dr. Jeff Pothof, UW Health's Chief Quality Officer, said. Across town, SSM Health St. Mary's Hospital is also struggling with capacity.

"From an SSM standpoint, with seven hospitals in the state of Wisconsin, we are at or near capacity at every single one of those hospitals," Kyle Nondorf, St. Mary's Hospital president, said. However, unlike during the hospitalization surge of late 2020, Nondorf said staffing isn't the biggest challenge right now. "We are at our capacity from a physical bed perspective," he said.

In order to free up some room, he said SSM Health has moved some procedures from the hospital to other ambulatory surgery centers. While the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 is increasing, those aren't the only patients filling up hospital beds. Nondorf said health care workers typically see more patients in the winter because of other respiratory viruses. Additionally, he said it's taking longer to discharge patients right now, so people are staying in the hospital for longer.

Pothof said he's also seeing more people who are sick right now because they put off getting medical care last year because of the pandemic. "We've got an increasing roster of COVID patients, but we're already really full with other really sick patients, and that makes it doubly hard to try to figure out how to manage all the volume that's being asked of us to manage right now," Pothof said.

One of the options for managing the demand for hospital beds: postponing non-urgent procedures, like colonoscopies. It's a move Madison-area hospitals took in 2020, and Pothof said it's back on the table again. However, he said it's not an ideal solution. "It's not just so easy as saying, 'Well, here's the elective ones, let's just postpone those,'" Pothof said. "Those are real patients, real families and not doing those procedures has real implications for those folks." Nondorf said the biggest way to help relieve the stress on hospitals is to get vaccinated if you haven't already. He also stressed the importance of continuing to wear masks and social distance to slow the spread of COVID-19.

https://www.wkow.com/coronavirus/madison-area-hospitals-nearing-capacity-as-covid-19-cases-surge/article_b57bc5b8-54c2-11ec-82a0-0b2c42a66516.html