Hospitals in New England are nearing capacity as cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant burden regions that have not had significant surges in previous waves.
In New Hampshire, where the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized is the highest it has ever been, dozens of National Guard members will help hospital staff ride out the winter surge, Gov. Chris Sununu announced Wednesday. Officials in Massachusetts are considering a similar approach as patients continue to overwhelm understaffed medical centers across the state. Intensive care units in upstate New York, an important referral hub for central and northern Vermont, are also nearing capacity, according to federal data.
Executives at New Hampshire-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health on Thursday said critically ill coronavirus patients are straining a system that’s already stretched thin by across-the-board staffing shortages. The health system’s flagship hospital, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in the Upper Valley’s core city of Lebanon, New Hampshire, primarily serves patients in the Twin States.
“When you have over 40% of your beds taken up by Covid patients, those people that have a heart attack and a stroke — that need that ICU bed — we have to work really hard to find a bed to put them in, and sometimes we can't find one in this state,” President and CEO Joanne Conroy said at Thursday’s press conference.
The surges come as Vermont contends with its worst coronavirus wave yet. Nearly 80 Covid-19 patients are in Vermont hospitals as of Friday, including 24 people needing intensive care, Vermont Department of Health data shows. The lack of beds at major referral hubs in upstate New York and the Upper Valley compounds the Green Mountain State’s challenges in the days ahead.
Vermont leaders said on Tuesday that they expect cases to increase in the coming weeks but expressed confidence the state would weather the surge. The state is helping health care facilities cover the cost of temporary staff needed to open more beds, but officials said they asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for additional personnel.
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Earlier this week, providers at Gifford Health, a small rural hospital in central Vermont, said Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health had sometimes refused to take critically ill patients for lack of available beds. Officials at the Lebanon hospital said on Thursday that transfers of this kind have been a challenge. Leaders at New London (New Hampshire) Hospital, also part of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health network, said they have had to transfer patients to hospitals nearly three hours south to Providence, Rhode Island.
“Our ambulance fleet is moving way farther than they ever had before,” New London President and CEO Tom Manion said.
The New Hampshire hospital chain is not alone.
In Massachusetts and upstate New York, state leaders ordered hospitals nearing their capacity to stop or limit surgeries and other non-urgent procedures. It’s an approach that Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the University of Vermont Health Network have also used.
“This might be a patient that has a seizure disorder that we want to electively admit for a video EEG (electroencephalogram) study, or it might be someone who needs a hip replacement and it can get put off,” said Edward Merrens, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health’s chief clinical officer. “These are situations that need to be done but can be put off for sometimes for weeks.”
University of Vermont Medical Center spokesperson Annie Mackin estimated that upward of 250 procedures will have to be postponed this month. Providers at the Burlington hospital usually perform an average of 1,600 procedures per month, she said.
Leaders at both health systems have asked for assistance from FEMA’s medical personnel team.
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