Hospitals may have to get a little creative to meet the directive from Gov. Pete Ricketts that they keep at least 10% of their beds open for COVID-19 patients.
Ricketts announced the order Friday, along with others aimed at combating a spike in coronavirus cases that has seen Nebraska set records for both number of cases and number of hospitalized patients.
Monday night, there were 380 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the most since the pandemic began and about a 50% increase since the beginning of October. By Tuesday, the number had dropped to 338, but Monday's surge came thanks to a surge in cases. Nebraska set single-day and weekly records Friday.
Those came the same day the governor said hospitals would need to keep 10% of their beds open for COVID-19 patients in order to continue doing elective surgeries. The updates to Nebraska's directed health measures are effective Wednesday.
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Bob Ravenscroft, Bryan Health's vice president of advancement, said the health system supports the governor's directed health measures, but that "the rigid 10% is a little bit of a sticking point."
Ravenscroft said Bryan's patient numbers can literally fluctuate by the hour with constant admissions and discharges.
Nonetheless, he said Bryan has a plan to meet the 10% requirement through a combination of the staffed bed capacity at its two Lincoln hospitals, other hospitals in its system such as those in Crete and Central City, and what are called "waiver beds," which include beds set aside for pediatric patients, those doing some form of rehabilitation, overflow beds and beds at its doctors' outpatient surgical hospital.
"This is not new," Ravenscroft said. "Bryan throughout this has implemented all of these except for the doctors' outpatient surgery as capacities have fluctuated up and down."
He also said that Bryan throughout the pandemic has been "very careful" in regulating the amount of elective surgeries it does that require an overnight stay.
Cliff Robertson, CEO of CHI Health, which owns CHI St. Elizabeth in Lincoln, said most hospitals as a general rule operate with tight capacity and are routinely 90% full or more at any given time.
Robertson said hospitals are kind of like airplanes in that they have incredibly high fixed costs and need paying patients to cover those costs.
"An airplane not full is incredibly costly," he said.
That being said, CHI has close to 400 beds across its system that could be available immediately so long as it had the staffing.
Because of that, Robertson said CHI Health has adequate capacity and has no immediate plans to cut back on elective surgeries, but that could change.
"Tomorrow could be different; next Monday could be different," he said.
Robertson noted that current case count and test positivity trends point to a continued increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations for at least the next couple of weeks.
He said CHI Health on Tuesday had 128 COVID-19 patients across its 14 hospitals in Nebraska and Iowa, which is up about 40 from last week.
Bryan as of Tuesday had 47 COVID-19 patients, 31 of whom are from outside Lancaster County, something Ravenscroft called "somewhat concerning."
He said that even with the capacity constraints, Bryan remains committed to taking transfers of patients from rural hospitals who need higher levels of care.