Influx ‘totally unprecedented’
Concern grows as Indiana hospitals fill with COVID-19 patients
As winter comes, concern is growing as Indiana hospitals, intensive care units and emergency rooms are filling with COVID-19 patients.
In the past two weeks, all eight hospitals they serve, including St. Catherine in East Chicago, Franciscan Hammond, Franciscan Dyer and Methodist Northlake in Gary have been on bypass at some point, said Merrillville-based Northwest Ambulance owner Alechia Norwood.
That means ambulances are told for a certain block of time that a hospital is at capacity, directing them elsewhere. By comparison, as an emergency room nurse at Methodist Northlake in Gary from 2006-2015, it went on bypass only once for four hours, she said.
“This is totally unprecedented to see all of the hospitals on bypass,” Norwood said.
Franciscan Health, with hospitals in Northwest Indiana, Indianapolis, Lafayette, and Olympia Fields, Illinois, is seeing a big jump in cases and a shrinking number of intensive care unit beds.
“In recent weeks, we have seen a surge in COVID cases across our system. Our inpatient bed occupancy rates are above 90% across the system. Currently, our ICU capacity is low, and varies from day to day, presently ranging between 11 and 20 ICU beds available systemwide. We have adequate ventilator capacity at all our hospitals,” spokesman Robert Blaszkiewicz said.
More patients are coming to emergency rooms, he said.
“This has contributed to our Northwest Indiana hospitals being placed on bypass intermittently in recent weeks. Bypass is a temporary designation that helps first responders deliver patients to the emergency department where they can receive the most prompt care,” Blaszkiewicz said.
Others emphasized “bypass” is a “courtesy” warning to EMTs and by law hospitals still have to take patients.
“St. Mary’s has been very gracious to us. They are very understanding of the situation,” Hobart Fire Assistant Chief and spokesman John Reitz said.
Indiana’s Region 1, which includes hospitals in Lake, Porter, Jasper, Newton and LaPorte counties, only had 45 open ICU beds Friday, or 17.9%. COVID-19 patients take up 38.5% of ICU
beds. Single-day COVID-19 hospitalizations declined to 474 Wednesday, down from an all-time high of 588 on Nov. 30, nearly twice spring’s peak of 300 in April.
“I would call the situation almost dire,” said Thomas J. Duszynski, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health Director of Epidemiology Education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Rising case numbers directly lead to rising hospitalizations, patients going into the ICU and on ventilators, and more deaths, he said.
“We just got through Thanksgiving,” Duszynski said. “We expect to see a bump in cases even more than what we are seeing now, putting even more pressure on the health care system.”
Hospitals can always add more beds, but they need enough nurses, doctors, physician assistants and respiratory techs to staff them, he said. They can’t be at work if they are exposed to the virus. Hospitals do try to recruit retired health care workers to fill shortages, but that is typically only a “Band-Aid.”
It could lead to patients getting transferred to other areas, such as Chicago, he said. In Indianapolis, they are now seeing more patients brought in from other areas.
“When a hospital has to go on diversion simply because they don’t have capacity, they start looking for other hospitals where they can take patients,” he said. “That’s occurring now as we speak.”
Franciscan is expecting a possible bump from Thanksgiving in the next 7-10 days, preparing all the rooms they can, Blaszkiewicz said.
“We also have the ability to allow patients to recover at home using remote home monitoring equipment, including thermometers and pulse oximeters that can be monitored by our health care providers remotely,” he said. “This kind of technology reduces the stress on our inpatient capacity, while providing an early warning for COVID - positive patients at home that their condition might require additional treatment.”