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“You cry,” he told the Tribune. “There is a lady I have taken care of that I have known since I was a child … we grew up together, and I know she’s going to die … It’s the same thing: ‘We got together for Christmas. ”Now we see the ramifications.”
Across Texas, hospital intensive care units are battered as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in a post-vacation wave. Dozens of facilities reported that their intensive care units had reached or exceeded 100% of their capacity for weeks, leaving staff overworked and exhausted.
More than 50 hospitals in Texas are currently reporting that their intensive care units are 100% or more full, and a dozen of them have been for more than half of the 24 weeks since hospitals began reporting these. information in July, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of data released by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Here’s how many hospitals in Texas are running out of intensive care beds
As of January 8, 53 hospitals in Texas reported that their intensive care beds were filled to capacity. About 200 hospitals in Texas with more than four patients or intensive care beds report their weekly intensive care data – which includes patients with COVID-19 – to the federal government.
Note: Since data for hospitals with fewer than four patients or fewer than four adult ICU beds are redacted, we cannot calculate the percentage of staffed ICU beds. About 200 of the more than 400 hospitals in Texas that have reported data to the federal government have fewer than four adult intensive care beds at any one time.
Source: Department of Health and Social Services
Credit: Carla Astudillo
For example, the Rio Grande Regional Hospital in McAllen and the HCA Houston Healthcare Medical Center in Houston exceeded 100% for 23 and 22 weeks, respectively.
While statewide hospitalizations from COVID-19 appear to be leveling off, there is still cause for concern, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for Texas State Department health services. Across Texas, there are about 600 intensive care beds available – a fraction of the few thousand that were open in the spring when the pandemic began.
Van Deusen said the pandemic appeared to be hitting different regions in waves. Currently, the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio areas are experiencing significant spikes in COVID-19 cases, according to DSHS data.
Laredo health officials have sent emergency alerts asking residents to stay at home as local ICUs have run out of capacity over the past month. Currently, COVID-19 patients occupy nearly half of that region’s hospital capacity, according to DSHS data – the highest percentage in the state.
Many cities have had to divert patients to other hospitals due to the overflow of their local intensive care units, in addition to expanding and converting beds available to treat intensive care patients.
Melendez said that counting the available intensive care beds doesn’t give the full picture of Texas hospitals, as they are constantly adjusting to accommodate more patients. If an intensive care unit is technically full, he said, many hospitals can still convert some beds or units available outside that ward to provide care for patients in an intensive care unit.
Hendrick Health chief of staff Stephen Lowry said his hospital in Abilene had used both bypass and bed conversion. Currently, the facility is operating at 160% of its capacity, which is down from a high of 180%, he said.
RELATED: Texas Has A Problem With Its COVID-19 Vaccination Data, And The Stakes Are High. Now the state is working to resolve it.
Hendrick Health is the regional referral center for 24 surrounding counties, but Lowry said the hospital has been unable to meet the needs of the area as they run out of space for new patients; they created all the new space they could in the spring before the pandemic struck.
“It’s really frustrating,” Lowry said. “You hear stories from outside the community, or from family members who may have relatives in one of these outlying towns, and they find it difficult to bring their loved ones to a higher level of care. because not just Hendrick but many other facilities statewide are full and unable to accept transfers. “
Texas Health Fort Worth, one of the busiest hospitals in Tarrant County, said it reached 100% of its intensive care capacity on January 8, according to HHS data. Hospital president Joseph DeLeon said like many other medical centers, the Texas Health Resources network has tried to ease the pressure by canceling non-critical outpatient procedures.
But so far, the measures that helped during the COVID-19 summer surge have not worked as well in the winter, DeLeon said.
“We were like, ‘Well, OK, now we have some experience of July, we kind of know what it’s going to be like. “But the second wave was different. There were a lot more critically ill patients this time around,” DeLeon told the Tribune. “This time we had a lot more stress on staff, a lot more stress on the doctors … it was just an endurance test. “
The Texas Tribune has a search tool where you can see the capacity of intensive care units at Texas hospitals as of Jan. 8 in various cities in Texas, including Houston.
Cynthia Simmons is the Arlington public health authority and emergency physician at Medical City of Arlington, which has been at 100% or near for weeks. She said Texans should understand that if they have car crashes, heart attacks or face other emergencies unrelated to COVID-19, a full intensive care unit at the nearest hospital could mean that there may not be enough resources available.
“We are now at a point where we have so much COVID in our community, it spreads so easily, that the same things that we have been talking about public health measures since day one are really important now,” said Simmons. “I realize that people have had enough. But it’s really, really important at this point right now that we continue these steps to help preserve the capacity of our hospitals.”
SEE ALSO: Where Parents And Students In Texas With Mental Health Issues Can Go For Help
Simmons added that people shouldn’t delay care if they need it because emergency rooms are adept at handling both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, even when they are full.
Simmons and other Texas health workers have expressed hope for the future after the Texas vaccination process begins on December 14. Tens of thousands of people have already received a second dose, although millions of people who are now eligible are still waiting for Texas to receive enough doses to immunize health workers, long-term care residents, people in over 65 and those with certain health problems that make up groups 1A and 1B.
But the crisis in the intensive care bed is far from over. While hospitalizations are not currently increasing at the higher rates in December, a more contagious variant of COVID-19, identified in Harris County on January 7, could lead to a larger increase in hospitalizations as it spreads . While it doesn’t make people sicker or affect the death rate, the mutation means the virus could spread faster and infect more people, said Stephen Love, president and CEO of Dallas. -Fort Worth Hospital Council.
“As a result, more hospitalizations, more capacity issues,” Love said. “For the next three to four weeks, (it’s) absolutely essential for us to monitor and try to get the message out to people to do what they need to do to reduce the spiral.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, non-partisan media organization that educates Texans – and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues.
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