[ad_1]
The supervisory board approved a lease to turn the old Sears building into a facility to treat COVID-19 overflow patients, but Santa Barbara County never implemented the deal.
During the July spike in local cases and hospitalizations, the county viewed the vacant store as a potential alternative care site for South Coast patients.
The lease, which the supervisory board approved but was never executed, outlined a plan to transform the building into a 200-bed health facility to serve patients if the county hospital system was overwhelmed.
The La Cumbre Plaza building at 3845 State St. has been empty since Sears closed in January 2019.
“As for Sears as an alternative care site, that is not the state leadership currently,” Public Health Director Van Do-Reynoso told supervisors on Tuesday.
“We currently have peak capacity in our hospitals. If we were to have another site of care, we would partner up and use what is available in the SLO alternative care site if necessary, and that’s a huge “if needed”.
“Right now our hospitals are quite comfortable and prefer any expansion to provide patient care to be within their own walls and campus. The problem is to recruit staff.
North County patients could be referred to the established (but never used) alternative care site at Cal Poly, the San Luis Obispo campus.
“When we chose the Sears option last year, it was a different time and space in the pandemic. It is no longer recommended or preferred in our community health care providers or in the state given what we know for the treatment of inpatients, ”Do-Reynoso said.
The supervisory board approved the lease for the property in July, but the county then decided not to execute the deal, deputy general services manager Skip Gray told Noozhawk on Tuesday.
“Once it was determined that the county no longer needed the Sears property, we ended up not executing the agreement or the lease,” Gray said.
The agreement and letter of intent to lease the property included a “no-charge holding period” until August, he said.
“The county made the decision not to enter into the lease on Aug. 28,” Gray said.
The county still has an agreement to use the Best Western hotel at 2220 Bath St. as an alternative care site near the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, but that has not been activated, Gray said.
Surge plans for hospitals
Do-Reynoso said hospitals prefer to increase the capacity of their own facilities, which they are doing with surge plans.
Hospitals say they currently use 13 intensive care unit beds for COVID-19 patients. About 64% of the county’s intensive care patients have COVID-19.
With 211 patients hospitalized for COVID-19, there are more than double now compared to the summer peak that worried officials to the point of seeking alternative care sites.
Cottage Health President and CEO Ron Werft last week described the work being done by Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital to convert units into COVID-19 treatment areas and withdraw staff from other areas of the hospital. hospital.
There was a COVID-19 isolation unit operating at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital during Thanksgiving, and now there are five, including two intensive care units, Werft said last week.
One of the intensive care surgical units has been converted into a unit to treat patients with COVID-19, he added.
The current challenge is staffing more than physical beds, according to public health and hospital officials.
“As we look to the growing demand for our Santa Barbara hospitals, beds won’t be the challenge, PPE and ventilators won’t be the challenge,” Werft said. “The problem is the staffing of intensive care.
“Although we are currently staffed beyond what we normally see, the ability to identify, recruit and respond to this type of demand is very difficult.”
– Noozhawk Editor-in-Chief Giana Magnoli can be reached at (JavaScript must be enabled to display this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link