COVID-19 patients fill up ICUS at rural Ohio hospitals
A rising number of COVID-19 patients are squeezing rural Ohio hospitals and have already filled beds in an intensive care unit in Portsmouth.
Portsmouth, about 80 miles south of Columbus, is a city of around 20,000 served by a 248-patient bed Southern Ohio Medical Center. With ICU beds full, the hospital may not have room to treat someone suffering from chest pains or a stroke or who was involved in a car accident, the medical center said in a statement posted to Facebook over the weekend.
To deal with the influx in patients, the hospital is considering opening a fourth COVID unit and altering some ICU rooms so they can house two patients, according to a statement provide by the hospital to The Dispatch.
“At no other point in the pandemic have these steps been necessary,” the statement reads. “Because patient volumes can change rapidly, it is difficult to predict where we will be in weeks, days or even hours. What we know right now is we cannot guarantee a bed...”
The problems in Portsmouth come as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have climbed in recent weeks as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.
As of Monday, 3,427 Ohioans with COVID were hospitalized across the state, the Ohio Department of Health reported. New COVID-19 infections reached their highest point in three weeks Friday with 9,019 new infections reported in Ohio.
Columbus-area hospitals, like the one in Portsmouth, have also been sounding the alarm on beds and ICUS filling up. In late August, the CEOS of Mount Carmel, Ohiohealth, Nationwide Children’s and Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center wrote a letter to The Dispatch calling for people to take action to slow the spread of the virus.
Wexner Medical Center routinely works with hospitals across the state to help care for patients too sick to stay in a local facility, said Dr. Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer and the doctor overseeing pandemic hospital coordination in central Ohio. But with ongoing virus capacity issues of its own, Thomas said Wexner has limited transfers from out of state and sometimes from hospitals outside the greater Columbus region.
The ICU at Ohiohealth’s Doctors Hospital was at 99%, while Riverside Methodist Hospital’s ICU was 98% full and the ICU at Grant Medical Center was 93% full, as of the week of Sept. 3.
Wexner Medical Center’s ICU was at 89.9% capacity the week of Sept. 3 and no other ICU at a Columbus-area hospital was at or above 90% capacity, data shows.
The ICU at the Southern Ohio Medical Center filled up a day after the hospital reported its highest number of Covid-positive patients, with 45 hospitalized. Adena Health in Chillicothe had 70 COVID patients as of Monday, which was more than its peak of 60 virus hospitalizations at one time last winter, spokesman Jason Gilham said.
King’s Daughters Medical Center, which has locations in Portsmouth and Ashland, Kentucky, had 82 COVID-19 patients and no beds available in its COVID ICU as of Thursday, according to a letter from CEO Kristie Whitlatch posted to the hospital’s Facebook page.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Whitlatch wrote. “This past week has been brutal. Our team, our medical staff, our facility is stretched to capacity. They are exhausted but determined to push through.”
Even if rural hospitals want to open more COVID units or ICUS, many don’t have the staff to do so, said Sharon Casapulla, co-president of the Ohio Rural Health Association and director of education and research at the office of rural and underserved programs at Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. Before the pandemic, rural hospitals struggled keep up with staff shortages, and the virus has made that even more challenging as some workers leave the health care field altogether.
Since Jan. 1, 97% of all Ohioans hospitalized with COVID have been unvaccinated, meaning the strain rural hospitals are feeling could have been avoided if more people got the jab. At this point, access isn’t the issue as vaccines are available in most rural Ohio communities, Casapulla said.
“It’s mistrust, it’s misunderstanding and hesitancy,” Casapulla said. “I think people aren’t sure who to believe and who to trust . ... Sometimes their decision-making falls to fear and anxiety instead of trusting the science.”
Portsmouth is the seat of Scioto County, where around 43% of residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. By comparison, about 57% of Franklin County residents have gotten at least one COVID-19 shot, as have 52.8% of Ohio residents, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Scioto County isn’t alone, though. Neighboring counties and rural areas around the state have lower vaccination rates than Ohio as a whole.
Unless immunizations pick up, it’s likely regions with fewer vaccinated residents will bear the brunt of the pandemic’s coming days, said Jamie Parsons, executive director of the Viola Startzman Clinic in Wooster. About 41% of residents in Wayne County, where Wooster is located, have received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, state data shows.
Persuading someone who thinks COVID is a hoax to get a vaccine is a difficult task, Parsons said. It’s going to take personal stories and grassroots efforts to change the minds of some skeptical Ohioans, Parsons said.
When a family member or friend suffers a serious COVID infection or dies from the virus, Parsons said it often spurs people who were close to them to get vaccinated and advocate for others to get the shot.
Still, Parsons said, it’s frustrating that it sometimes takes a tragedy to persuade people to protect themselves with a vaccine.
“We trust our physicians in so many critical points in our life,” Parsons said. “We trust them to deliver our babies, we trust them when crises happen and suddenly we’ve put our physicians in a position where we’re not trusting what they’re saying. It’s so disheartening.” mfilby@dispatch.com @Maxfilby