Holy Cross avoids COVID-19 capacity crisis – for now
Hospitals throughout New Mexico have seen an average 90 percent increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the last three weeks, with the state now mulling the idea of reserving care only for those likely to survive the virus.
Holy Cross Medical Center in Taos is so far an anomaly in that trend.
“The patient volume Holy Cross has experienced in the last 7-10 days is less than was seen during the month of November,” said Bill Patten, chief executive officer at Holy Cross, Tuesday (Dec. 8). “While the governor may issue an executive order related to crisis standards of care, at this point in time Holy Cross would not need to implement such standards. If we should see a surge in the coming weeks, the utilization of such standards will be reevaluated.”
Patten referred to a census taken at Holy Cross, Monday night (Dec. 7), which showed just two COVID-19 patients in the Holy Cross medical and surgical unit, with none in the intensive care unit. So far this month, no one has died at the hospital of the disease.
By contrast, 55 COVID-positive patients were admitted to the local Critical Access hospital in November and 15 of those patients died, an 86 percent increase over the two deaths the hospital has seen on average each month since the pandemic began.
“That includes two [who] were discharged on hospice and two that were transferred to tertiary care hospitals and died there. It does not include patients who died in or were transferred from the ER,” Patten noted.
The spike in admissions and deaths at Holy Cross last month was largely driven by an outbreak of the virus at Taos Living Center. There, the virus has killed a total of 20 residents and infected 46 others, according to an update last week from Dave Armijo, administrator at the Living Center. In an update this week, Armijo said that a staff member at the facility, a man, had also died of the virus, making him the first employee at the Living Center to succumb to COVID-19.
But while Holy Cross has seen its capacity move back to acceptable levels, administrators at the state’s largest hospitals, like University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and Presbyterian, which runs a network of medical facilities throughout the state, say they no longer have beds for new patients who become seriously ill with the virus. As of Monday (Dec. 7), the New Mexico Department of Health noted 935 individuals hospitalized in New Mexico for COVID-19.
On Friday (Dec. 4) Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued
an executive order asking the state’s Medical Advisory Team to recommend whether “crisis care standards” should be enacted at hospitals in the state, which could, among other things, grant hospital administrators the ability to determine which patients should take up beds, be placed on ventilators or benefit from other life-saving equipment.
New Mexico Human Services Department Secretary Dr. David Scrase was scheduled to address the capacity crisis at some state hospitals in a livestream press conference on Tuesday (Dec. 8), but a network outage for the state’s information systems delayed the event, along with the Health Department’s daily update on new cases throughout the state.
Some relief from the pandemic may finally be on the horizon, however, as a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, developed by pharmaceutical company PfizerBioNTech, may soon have its initial doses reach a small slice of the U.S. population.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to grant emergency approval for the vaccine as early as the end of this week, with an initial batch of 6.4 million doses made available in all states, set to inoculate frontline healthcare workers most likely to come into contact with the virus.
Holy Cross in Taos is preparing to receive a vaccine for its own workers, as is Taos Living Center, for both residents and staff. Patten expects to have doses on hand by the end of December. Armijo said he could have doses ready to administer by the end of next week.
This week Patten and his team have been embroiled in logistical planning to receive the vaccine, and will have more information on how it plans to begin to handle the initial – potentially life-saving doses – by early next week.