Joel Philippsen | CRH Photo Columbus Regional Health Registered Nurse Aeran Pearson uses a computer to chart in the hallway after leaving a patient room on the 5 Tower floor at Columbus Regional Hospital Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021. Inpatient census at the hospital was approaching 200 patients on Thursday.
Columbus Regional Hospital is at its most overwhelmed point of the pandemic so far as officials struggle to handle a flood of patients amid the worst coronavirus wave in a year, which they say has “severely put at risk” their ability to care for patients.
At times over the past week, patients at CRH have been placed in beds along hallways as staff wait for rooms to become available. Nurses, doctors and others are working extra shifts to try to keep pace.
The hospital’s intensive care unit has been bursting at the seams, with 14 to 15 patients for much of the week, forcing staff to place its ICU on diversion “a few times.” Diversion means the hospital notifies state health officials they are unable to take more critically ill patients and those patients need to be “diverted” to another facility.
But with hospitals filling up across the state and Midwest, officials are finding hardly anywhere to divert patients to.
COVID-19 hospitalizations at CRH have continued to climb as well, nearly reaching a record high over the past week, with 58 this past Friday — one shy of the all-time record 59 on Dec. 2, 2020.
The dire situation at CRH reached yet another fever pitch Thursday morning, with 198 total hospitalizations — the most ever in the hospital’s 104-year history, officials said. It was the second time this week that record had been broken.
And there’s no end in sight as COVID-19 continues to hammer the local health care system even before the omicron variant has been detected in Indiana.
“We feel somewhat defeated,” said CRH spokeswoman Kelsey DeClue. “It’s really hard right now because we still don’t anticipate this slowing down anytime soon.”
“We just don’t know how much the general public knows (about) how serious a situation our hospital and our health systems are in,” DeClue said.
The mounting alarm among local health officials comes nearly one year to the day that CRH was preparing to receive its first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and embark on the largest mass vaccination campaign in the county’s history.
But the excitement and relief of the vaccines has since faded amid lagging vaccination rates.
One year later, 65,500 eligible people in Bartholomew, Jackson and Jennings counties remain unvaccinated, according to the Indiana Department of Health.
A total of 309 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the three counties over the past week than started the vaccination process, according to state records.
At the same time, COVID-19 has sent 780 people from Bartholomew, Jackson and Jennings Counties to hospital emergency rooms over the past month, resulting in 123 hospitalizations and 44 ICU admissions, according to the most recent figures from the Regenstrief Institute.
Over the past seven days, Bartholomew County’s COVID-19 case rate has been 495 per 100,000 residents — twice the national rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jackson County’s rate is even higher, at 825 cases per 100,000 residents.
As of Thursday morning, 44 people were hospitalized at CRH with COVID-19 — including five listed in critical condition — accounting for roughly 1 in 4 people hospitalized. One child was hospitalized with the coronavirus, as were two people in their 20s, one person in their 30s and seven people in their 40s.
A “sizeable proportion” of the 198 people hospitalized Thursday morning were dealing with health issues from previous COVID-19 infections or delays in care due to the pandemic, the hospital said.
By comparison, CRH officials said they generally see more hospitalizations this time of year, but in previous years, 100 to 120 hospitalizations on the same day would have been considered “very busy.”
“It’s so baffling that we’re still in the situation that we’re in,” DeClue said. “…We should have so much more of a handle on (COVID-19). We’re at over 800,000 deaths in the U.S. — 800,000. I mean, how did we get here?”
Currently, CRH does not plan to formally suspend elective procedures, but doctors are starting to discuss postponing some non-urgent procedures if it can be safely put off. CRH is urging the community to get vaccinated and wear a mask.
“We really need the community to understand where we’re at as an organization, as a hospital,” DeClue said. “…We are doing as much as we can to keep up with these incredibly high numbers with this surge.”
“We just ask the community to please be as safe as you possibly can because, COVID or not, access to care for a variety of medical needs is at risk,” she added.
Joel Philippsen | CRH Photo Nursing Administrative Coordinators (NACs) Lynn Lutz, right, and Jennifer Willoughby discuss patient placements transfers and placements in the Command Center at Columbus Regional Hospital Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. Columbus Regional Hospital is currently experiencing a high inpatient census and like many other area hospitals, is experiencing physical and staffing capacity constraints.
Joel Philippsen | CRH Photo Pharmacy Technician Carrie O’Sullivan restocks medications on 5 Tower at Columbus Regional Hospital Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021. O’Sullivan, who has worked at the hospital for 21 years, said that the high inpatient census has made her role busier with restocking medications on the patient floors.
Joel Philippsen | CRH Photo Nursing Administrative Coordinators (NACs) Lynn Lutz, right, and Jennifer Willoughby discuss patient placements transfers and placements in the Command Center at Columbus Regional Hospital Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021. Columbus Regional Hospital is currently experiencing a high inpatient census and like many other area hospitals, is experiencing physical and staffing capacity constraints.
Joel Philippsen | CRH Photo Columbus Regional Health Registered Nurse Aeran Pearson uses a computer to chart in the hallway after leaving a patient room on the 5 Tower floor at Columbus Regional Hospital Thursday afternoon, Dec. 16, 2021. Inpatient census at the hospital was approaching 200 patients on Thursday.
Andy East | The Republic
