Bloomington-Normal hospital beds are filling up with COVID-19 patients again — and hospital officials say COVID patients are younger and sicker than before. The data also show a vast majority of COVID patients are not vaccinated.
At the end of July, OSF St. Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington and Carle BroMenn in Normal had five COVID patients. By late August, they had more than 40.
Hospitals generally operate at close to capacity year-round, and administrators say they have a lot of flexibility to take on additional patients. Sometimes that includes limits on elective surgery as hospitals did last year.
Dr. J.C. Michel is director of critical care at OSF St. Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington. Michel said it's not as bad now as it was last fall when COVID cases and hospitalizations peaked, but staff has had to make adjustments.
“There have been times over the last several days and weeks where it’s been difficult to fully serve the community, with patients occasionally having to board in the emergency room. But we do have capacity and St. Joseph's is operating at full capacity at this time,” Michel said.
Michel said he doesn't foresee the need to take more drastic measures, such as limiting elective surgeries.
Tim Bassett, president of operations at Carle BroMenn Medical Center, said medical staff has to closely monitor length of stays to keep enough beds available.
“That is a concerted and very disciplined focus on managing our patients, ensuring the appropriate level of placement, making sure we are doing anything and everything we can to possibly increase and maximize the amount of throughput that we have to provide the availability to additional inpatient capacity,” Bassett said.
Carle BroMenn and OSF administrators both say the length of an average hospital stay is about the same as last year. The data show COVID patients' chance of survival is much greater now. Doctors and nurses know of more effective treatments than they did last year and there are more younger COVID patients in the hospital now.
Bassett said Carle BroMenn is not nearly as strained as it was last fall and winter, but he said current trends are troubling.
“I do feel that it’s been hard for me personally that and my partners as physicians to have almost a false hope that we’d get back to some type of normalcy and then this last two to three weeks to realize it was all going to happen again, it was dispiriting."J. C. Michel, OSF HealthCare
“It’s concerning to see where we are headed in terms of not only positivity in the community, but also inpatient COVID positive patients," Bassett said. "It’s important to know at this juncture we still have not fully come close to what the peak inpatient volume was at the height of the pandemic late last year and early this year."
Staff strained
Michel at OSF St. Joseph points out the big problem with hospital capacity isn't room for beds. It's staff.
“It hasn’t been like we thought, we are going to have to find 17 broom closets and put ventilator machines in there to help stem the tide of all our sick patients. It’s been, 'Gosh we need to find 17 more nurses and respiratory therapists so they can help take care of the patients,'" he said.
Michel said medical staff has had to take on longer shifts and more shifts. Bassett said staffing at Carle BroMenn has been a challenge, but manageable. Bassett acknowledged that can change in an instant and said you don’t have to look far to find major strains on the health care system.
“Our staffing is stable at this juncture, but we certainly don’t want to be in a position that other hospitals are experiencing in other parts of the country, even in Illinois — especially in southern Illinois, where staffing is truly at a crisis stage,” Bassett said.
Twin pandemic
There's another factor that could put hospitals at a crisis stage this fall. It's something they didn't have to deal with much last year — seasonal flu. Masks and social distancing and all the other COVID protocols kept flu cases at a minimum last year.
Bassett said hospitals have to prepare for the potential of a twin pandemic.
“Even if we see numbers remotely close to what we had late last year and early this year, that’s concerning and then you layer that with the return of flu, it has all the making to be an incredibly challenging winter throughout the course of 2021 and potentially into 2022,” he said.
This surge in coronavirus cases came just as health care workers were starting to think the pandemic would soon be over. Then came the Delta variant and the rate of COVID vaccinations stalled.
Michel said going through this pandemic for nearly a year and a half with no end in sight is tough.
“I do feel that it’s been hard for me personally and my partners as physicians to have almost a false hope that we’d get back to some type of normalcy and then this last two to three weeks to realize it was all going to happen again, it was dispiriting,” Michel said.
Michael said what adds to his frustration is that the vast majority of current COVID patients are not vaccinated. That's especially true for patients in intensive care. At OSF, 93% of its COVID ICU patients as of Aug. 24 are not vaccinated. At Carle Health facilities, 87% of ICU patients have not received the COVID vaccine, based on its latest data on Aug. 26.
Carle Health and OSF Healthcare both say they have no children in the hospital with COVID-19.
