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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowWith hospitalizations from COVID-19 soaring to new heights in recent weeks, the Indiana Hospital Association on Tuesday warned that medical facilities are straining to keep up with the patient loads, and called on Hoosiers to wear face coverings and practice social distancing.
The association, which represents more than 100 hospitals across the state, said all Hoosiers “should be alarmed at the COVID-19 trends we are seeing across the state.” It pointed out that hospitalizations have increased by 143% since Oct. 1.
For nine consecutive days, the Indiana Department of Health has reported higher numbers of people with COVID-19 in hospitals. On Tuesday, it said that 2,336 Hoosiers were hospitalized as of Monday, up from 963 on Oct. 1.
“Many hospitals are reporting staff shortages as the pandemic takes its toll,” association President Brian Tabor said in a written statement. “Hoosier nurses, doctors, and other front-line hospital staff have been working non-stop since the early spring. Please give these courageous health care heroes some much-needed relief by wearing a face covering, practicing social distancing, washing your hands, and staying home when you are sick. We need everyone to take these steps to relieve the enormous strain on the system at this critical time.”
In late September, Indiana lifted almost all pandemic-related restrictions on social gatherings and business activity. Gov. Eric Holcomb has told Hoosiers to wear masks and practice social distancing, but there are no penalties for not complying.
COVID-19 cases are surging in nearly every region across Indiana, with the northern region of the state recording the highest number of cases along with Marion County and portions of southern Indiana. Most counties across the state are coded orange at this time, meaning the positivity rate in those counties has grown to a range of 10% to 14.9% in the last seven days.
Many hospitals have told IBJ in recent days they are scrambling to keep up with the increased patient load, and are converting medical/surgical wings into COVID-19 isolation areas. The hospitals are also trying to fill nursing, medical and support shifts as staff members call in sick or are sent home after testing positive.
“We are seeing a significant uptick in inpatient COVID patients,” said Dr. Christopher Doehring, vice president of medical affairs at Franciscan Health. “And I think most of us are approaching our all-time highs as far as hospitalized COVID patients are concerned.”
COVID-19 patients typically require at least a week of hospitalization and sometimes much longer, he said, compared to the average inpatient stay of about five days.
“So, you can see if the number of these COVID patients keeps going up,it has kind of a compounding effect on hospital capacity, because of that longer length of stay,” he said.
Indiana University Health, the state’s largest hospital system, told IBJ on Friday that about 700 staff members were quarantined and unable to work out of a total workforce of about 35,000.
“When you start to get down to unit levels, if you’re trying to staff units, and you have even, you know, four or five people calling in (sick), that creates a big challenge,” said Dr. Michele Saysana, chief quality and safety officer for IU Health, which owns 16 hospitals. “I would say it’s a strain.”
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New record numbers every day!!!! How many citizens are we going let get sick, and how many are we going let die? It really is as simple as that.
However, let me try to understand the logic of the State response to the surging pandemic: Stage 5 is okay. Our focus, per Dr. Box, is to increase the amount of healthcare staff and healthcare capacity to take care of the increasing number of sick people. Oh by the way, please wear you mask, pretty please!! (I love it when Health Commissioner, who recently got over COVID-19 episode, has only this to offer to curb the raging pandemic in our State.
As I have said before our State needs outside expertise (e.g. Dr. Anthony Fauci) to tell us citizens the REAL status of our State’s current plan to mitigate the pandemic of our State. The current “experts” from State outside of government (e.g. IU) have done little more than to create a bunch of numbers that are totally not understood by the common lay person.
There needs to a ground swell of outrage from the medical community (i.e. hospital, physicians, medical organizations, nursing organization, pharmacists, etc.) to force a change in how our State is handling the pandemic.
The State has the money to finance, through the Care ACT, to fund a more comprehensively plan to provide all the necessary tools (PPE, testing, contact tracing, etc.) to get the situation under control.
A responsible government would be able to balance the economy AND public health. Indiana appears not to be able to multi-task. A responsible State government would be able to do both. (As a small business owner, I have lost at least 50% of my income for the year. I know the financial consequences of the pandemic. It took months as the beginning to obtain the necessary amount of PPE to keep my employees and customers safe. I have been able to keep the staff intact as well. However, one does not know what the future will bring)
Hopefully, with the election over for the State, our local leaders will begin to multi-task. Frankly, I do not expect any progress. With the flu season beginning and with more indoor events, we need to expect that things are just going to get worse.
Everyone for our State should realize that our current situation was avoidable. Letting things get worse by this State’s administration is UNCONSCIONABLE and INDEFENSIBLE.
Everyone should re-watch the scene from “NETWORK” where Peter Finch gives a speech that still resonates today. Here is the YOUTUBE link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
This responsible government I doing exactly what you ask: balancing the economy with the public health. Personally, I’d rather see all the restrictions lifted and let individuals make their own choices. Holcomb has actually done a remarkably good job of preventing complete economic destruction while keeping the general public’s health risk at bay. I would have preferred he do less, but personal accountability doesn’t seem to exist in this country anymore. Bring on full reopening; the sooner the better. People get sick. It happens.
Phillip, nice rant. Hope you didn’t waste much time putting it together as your comments will not change or impact anything so maybe they make you feel better. Our state government is doing as good or better than any other state government.
But I thought cases were only going up because we were doing more testing. What happened to that? I thought this was a hoax!