"If you are a hospital that's half empty, you can tolerate it." But U.S. "Even a 10% increase can be quite dangerous," says Litvak. But hospitals must be alert to rapid increases in patient load. There is no "magic number" to indicate when a health care system may be overwhelmed, says Eugene Litvak, who is CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Optimization and helps advise hospitals on how to manage their capacity. In Utah, where the share of hospitalized COVID-19 patients is about 8%, state health officials have already warned that hospitals may soon be forced to ration care because of limited ICU space. "When the numbers go up like that, particularly for critical care, that strains the system pretty significantly," says Abir. And some of the patients take up ICU space. Still, a growing share of beds occupied by COVID-19 patients can be a strong signal that the health care system is headed for trouble.ĬOVID-19 patients can be more labor intensive because health care workers have to follow intricate protocols around personal protective equipment and infection control. The level of COVID-19 hospitalizations that would be a crisis in one place might not be in another. "It's space, staff and stuff, and you need all three, and if you don't have one, it doesn't matter if you have the other two," says Abir. Hospital capacity is not so much a static number, but an ever-shifting balance of resources. The percentage of hospital beds taken up by COVID-19 patients does not tell a complete story about hospital capacity, says Sauer, but it's a starting point. Seven states are over 15%, including North Dakota and South Dakota, which are now over 20%. The latest data from HHS shows that in 18 states - mostly in the Midwest - COVID-19 hospitalizations have already climbed above 10%. In the most extreme cases, that can lead to rationing of care based on a patient's chance of survival. "Above that, 10% is where we think, 'Perhaps we have to start enacting surge strategies and crisis standards of care in some places.'"Ĭrisis standards of care is a broad term for how to prioritize medical treatment when resources are scarce. "We start to pay attention above 5%," says Sauer. Though there's not a fixed threshold that applies to all hospitals, generally speaking, once COVID-19 hospitalizations exceed 10% of all available beds, that signals an increasing risk that the health care system could soon be overwhelmed, explains Sauer. One way to gauge the growing stress on a health care system is by tracking the share of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients. Some are struggling to find room for patients, even in large urban hospitals that have more beds.īut the surge in hospitalizations is not evenly spread - and hospitals' capacity for weathering case surges varies greatly. In parts of the Midwest and the West, hospitals are already brushing up against their capacity to deliver care. With the numbers growing nearly everywhere, the key question for hospital leaders and policymakers is, when is a community on the brink of having more patients than it can handle? Where are hospitals at risk of maxing out? As of Monday, hospitalizations are rising in 47 states, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project, and 22 states are seeing their highest numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began. The impact varies state by state with certain areas showing much more rapid increases in hospitalizations.
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