With hospitals slammed, care for others delayed
Some patients left to suffer, risking future complications as procedures get pushed back.
Area resident Sara Larrick has coped with pain for more than six months, but the relief she was relying on has been postponed as local hospitals are too full with COVID-19 patients, most of them unvaccinated.
Larrick was supposed to get a hysterectomy Jan. 5 to end her nonstop bleeding and pain. The evening before her surgery, her Kettering Health doctor called to tell her it was rescheduled.
“I was devastated,” said the 39-year-old. “I had a good cry, a couple screaming and crying fits. I waited so long for that release to come … This is not my nose job got canceled. This is surgery that’s been warranted for months, but there were all these different struggles trying to get things approved and at the very last minute, they canceled it.”
The record number of coronavirus patients crushing area hospitals has consequences for everyone’s health care. Earlier this month, the region’s largest hospital networks — Premier Health, Kettering Health and Mercy Health — postponed nonemergency, elective surgeries that require an overnight stay.
On Jan. 19, 565 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 at Premier Health and Kettering Health hospitals, including 105 patients in the intensive care unit. Nearly nine out of 10 patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in the Dayton region are unvaccinated, according to GDAHA.
Thursday, nearly 79% of the beds in all the hospitals in our area were occupied. Nearly 79% of all ICU beds also were in use.
WhenPremierHealthannounced its new policy, a spokesman said the move was “to help preserve critical hospital capacity for our patients and the community.”