The leaders of Nebraska's largest hospitals say things are nearly back to normal thanks to the continuing decline in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
There were 191 COVID-19 patients in the state's hospitals as of Sunday night, the lowest level in seven months. That's down about 70% just in the past month.
"That's good news, very good news, for Nebraskans, for our hospitals and for our health care heroes working on the front lines," said Jeremy Nordquist, president of the Nebraska Hospital Association.
It's also allowed hospitals to catch their breath, relieve stress on staff and catch up on delayed care.
"The last two weeks have really been a collective sigh of relief," said Cory Shaw, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Nebraska Medicine.
The hospital is just more than a month removed from exiting its crisis standards of care plan, which was implemented in January for the first time ever because of rising COVID-19 hospitalizations and a staff shortage.
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But now, Shaw said Nebraska Medicine will return to fully normal operations next Monday.
Despite the decline in COVID-19 cases, Nebraska Medicine is still very busy, he said, as patients who have delayed necessary care fill the space that's been created.
"We've essentially swapped one patient for another," Shaw said.
Throughout the pandemic, Bryan Health delayed about 1,200 surgeries, said Dr. John Trapp, chief medical officer of the Lincoln-based health system.
Some of those surgeries eventually became urgent or emergent and had to be done, but Bryan is now trying to catch up on the others, Trapp said.
He said it will likely be early April before Bryan is back to what it considers to be normal operations, but he expects there to be an increased caseload of patients "for at least weeks and likely months" as people seek care they delayed because of the pandemic.
Dr. Cary Ward, the chief medical officer for CHI Health, said it was able to increase the number of outpatient surgeries it did while limiting inpatient surgeries during the pandemic and does not have "big backlogs" of patients waiting for surgeries.
Ward said staffing remains an issue, but he hopes nurses who left will come back now that things have settled down.
Another big improvement brought on by the decline in COVID-19 patients is larger hospitals are once again able to accommodate most transfer requests from smaller hospitals.
Ward said that just a few weeks ago, he would see lists of 30 or more patients waiting for transfers from smaller critical-access hospitals, and there were no larger hospitals that could take them.
"Now, we are not denying anybody," he said. "In the last ... 10 days at least, we've not had one denial from a critical-access hospital."
One change that hospitals are not making, even with the decline in COVID-19 patients and changes in public health guidance, is dropping mask requirements.
Trapp said Bryan has loosened requirements regarding mask use by employees in some private areas of the hospital, but staff and visitors are still required to wear them in public and patient-facing areas and will be for the foreseeable future.
He said hospitals care for vulnerable populations and need to protect those people "as much as we can."
"We're simply going to monitor and see how things go over the next few weeks," before reconsidering mask policies, Trapp said.
Ward said that despite the decline, case numbers still remain too high in most counties, including Douglas and Lancaster counties, which still have transmission levels in the "substantial" category.
"Until it gets significantly lower than that, we're not going to change our mask policy," he said.