With COVID-19 hospitalization rates on the rise in Utah, leaders from the state’s healthcare system weighed in on misconceptions and the governor’s new COVID-19 restrictions.
During a press conference between Utah’s healthcare leaders on Monday, representatives agreed that Governor Gary Herbert's new restrictions will help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Under the restrictions, masks are mandated throughout the state indefinitely and social gatherings are restricted to same households until Nov. 23.
Greg Bell, the President of the Utah Hospital Association, said the new health orders will help with the ballooning positivity rate of COVID-19 test results.
“The velocity of the spread has increased remarkably, and it must be checked because we simply cannot sustain the infection rate without severe consequences to the health and health care of the citizens of the state of Utah,” Bell said.
And Mark Briesacher, Chief Physician Executive with Intermountain Healthcare said they’ve been getting ready for a surge in hospitalizations since March.
“We have been preparing for this moment, for all these months,” Briesacher said. “We're ready for what we're currently experiencing. And we know that we have to break the curve here, begin to bend this down just as we have before.”
Time and time again health officials have said that Utah’s ICUs are nearing capacity. But on the state’s coronavirus dashboard, ICU bed capacity is averaging around 75% per day.
But Michael Baumann, the Chief Medical Officer of MountainStar Healthcare, says the percentage of ICU beds in use is oftentimes misinterpreted. So health officials are working on a more realistic representation of healthcare availability.
“We've talked about the issue and the challenges of staffing those beds,” he said. “So we're actually moving to not only listing the physical beds, but moving to an important nuance [which] is how many beds do we have staff that we can run? So for example, our system tends to look like it has more capacity, but we continue as other facilities do have more and more challenges with staffing as COVID becomes not only an increasing issue in Utah, but across the United States.”
And Bell says another issue with interpreting ICU capacity is that the majority of COVID-19 treatment is only being done in a limited number of facilities.
“So we might say that rural facilities and some community hospitals, while they may have some ICU beds, if you have a serious COVID case you're not going to treat them in those facilities,” Bell said. “If you have a serious case of covid, you're going to want to go to one of these 16 hospitals along the Wasatch Front or in St. George, where you're going to get that serious treatment.”
As numbers continue to rise in the state, medical professionals worry that they won’t be able to take care of elective surgeries.
Tom Miller is the Chief Medical Officer at the University of Utah Health. He said as it stands, they’ve only had to cancel some “non-time sensitive surgeries” and have been able to take care of any critical surgeries.
“So far, we've been able to keep up with critical surgeries or needed surgeries, time sensitive surgeries we're able to do that,” Miller said. “If the numbers keep climbing, then we're going to have to cut back on some of those surgeries.”
Health experts have begun preparation for a field hospital at the Mountain American Expo Center in Sandy to create more beds for COVID-19 patients.
