Area Hospitals Feeling The Impact As The Latest COVID Surge Continues
Area Hospitals Feeling The Impact As The Latest COVID Surge Continues
January 24, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Spirit Lake)– Area hospitals are feeling the squeeze as the recent surge in COVID cases continues. Jason Harrington, President and CEO of Lakes Regional Healthcare tells KUOO news the rate of COVID hospitalizations there recently is the highest they’ve been since the pandemic started…
“You know in the last couple of weeks we’ve averaged about six COVID positive inpatients. That number has kind of varied. There was a quarter of the year where we didn’t have any to six is probably as high as we’ve seen throughout the course of the pandemic, averaging about that number. I think of that six approximately 70 percent of our inpatient hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated, so 30 percent of those are vaccinated.”
Harrington says this latest wave is coming at the worse possible time as we are at the height of flu and other respiratory ailments. He says it is taking a toll both physically and emotionally on healthcare workers and is translating to a lack of beds in some cases…
“Inpatient volumes across the country, and there’s a lot of theories around it, have been full and in fact to the point of, you know, us having difficulty transferring patients sometimes to Avera-McKennan, or an outlying Mayo Clinic or an outlying tertiary center. I had, I was in a conversation the other day, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, which most everyone is familiar with, so University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics has 800 beds. At last count, last week when I was involved in that conversation, there were 100 people waiting to get into the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. That was the waiting list of patients who could or needed to be seen in a setting like that. So my point in sharing that is, you know, anything we can do at this point to keep people out of the hospital, you know, we certainly should be encouraging that. High amongst them are people getting vaccinated and receiving a booster.”
Harrington adds the recent wave of COVID has continued to impact some services…
“Generally speaking over the course of COVID there’s been a handful of days where we canceled inpatient surgeries because we just don’t have capacity for it. Last week was one of those times. We had a couple of inpatient surgeries that we postponed. We certainly don’t like doing that, as we’re not actively doing that, but that’s a day-to-day decision based on the volumes that are inside the hospital. And that’s true really across the region and across the state.”
Harrington adds he’s extremely proud of the staff at Lakes Regional Healthcare, but he says there is concern over the potential for burn out and exhaustion as the pandemic continues.
