Hospitals headed toward ‘breaking point’

Hospitalizations are expected to peak in the next 10 days.

“The next few weeks will be really tough, and it’s important for people to understand that,” Hultberg said.

She said that many hospitals are limiting non-urgent procedures to ensure they have enough available beds.

“Hospitals are managing elective surgeries on a day-to-day basis,” Hultberg said. The latest forecast by Peter Graven, an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University, predicted that about 1,550 people with COVID will need a hospital bed by Feb. 1 — about 100 fewer than he had anticipated.

That’s about 350 more than in early September when hospitalizations during the delta surge peaked and some hospitals ran out of beds.

The situation this time is different, Hultberg acknowledged. The omicron variant appears to cause less severe symptoms, so the need for critical care services is not as great, she said.

The Oregon Health Authority has contracted with temporary staffing agencies to provide hundreds of extra personnel to hospitals, skilled nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Gov. Kate Brown also ordered 1,200 National Guard members deployed to hospitals to provide transport, cleaning, dietary and other services to free up clinical staff to treat patients.

Hultberg thanked the state for the moves, which she said were “very helpful.”

More than 750 temporary workers have been deployed to health care facilities, according to Erica Heartquist, an Oregon Health Authority spokeswoman. But those are divided among a range of facilities, from behavioral health care and long-term care to rehabilitation facilities and hospitals.

Hospitals alone have requested nearly 1,370 clinicians, Heartquist wrote in an email. One staffing agency created a relief pool of 200 workers for daily emergencies, and they’re now mostly in the field. Hultberg encouraged the public to wear masks, maintain social distance and get vaccinated to protect themselves and others from needing to be treated or hospitalized.

Oregon Capital Chronicle, Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.