For nearly a week, COVID-19 hospital admissions in New Hampshire have hovered above 300 people, more than double the peak in the spring.
(Scroll down or click here to see what the situation was like at your local hospital last week.)
According to federal data, since about mid-December, about 1 in 5 IC beds in New Hampshire has been occupied by a patient with a confirmed case of COVID-19. In early January, that translated to about 60 COVID patients in ICUs statewide, up from about 30 a month earlier.
Those figures, combined with a shortage of staff and the already busy winter months, have forced many hospitals to adapt. This means postponing elective surgery, adding extra beds to ICUs and transferring some patients to other regional hospitals.
According to the New Hampshire Hospital Association, 305 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Tuesday, with 34 presumably positive patients in state hospitals. Health officials expected the rise, which started to pick up about a week after Christmas.
“The worrying thing is we’re on a higher plateau to start with, so we have very full ICU capacity in the state of New Hampshire,” said Dr. Greg Baxter, President of the Elliot Health System in Manchester.
The capacity of beds in many hospitals changes by the hour. As of Tuesday morning, Baxter said 42 of the 250 patients admitted had COVID-19. In the Elliot Hospital ICU, which Baxter said is now full, half have COVID-19. This weekend extra IC beds have been added.
It’s a similar story at Concord Hospital, where Chief Quality Officer Chris Fore says hospital admissions spiked last week and started to level off, but the ICU has been ‘more often than not’ full.
“We spend a lot of time here locally in Concord, and when I mean a lot of time, literally half of our days, seven days a week, just plan on staying ahead of what the capacity needs are,” Fore said.
To meet those needs, they added eight extra intensive care beds and accepted transfers from other hospitals.
And while some hospitals currently have the capacity to add more beds, the bigger problem is staffing them. Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia and its partner hospital in Franklin are struggling with that, as 27 staff were quarantined on Tuesday and all staffed hospital beds were full.
Even transferring some patients is going to be a challenge, says Cass Walker, vice president of administrative and support services at LRGHealthcare, as other hospitals are also filling up.
“We can’t open beds because we don’t have places for some of our patients to go,” Walker said.
LRGH is considering a return to more telecare as staff challenges continue.
“We can feel for our employees who are trying to stay, but they are tired and worried,” she said. “The entire healthcare system needs some help to get through this.”