CentraCare: Hospitals Hit Tipping Point, ‘This Is Like a War’

(KNSI) – CentraCare Health officials say its medical facilities are full and there is no more room for patients needing critical care.

CentraCare CEO Dr. Ken Holmen told KNSI News that COVID-19, specifically the Delta variant, has pushed the state hospital capacity to its maximum.

“It is a real challenge and it has been for some time. We are full. Our ICUs are full. So, the problem is that we have to manage this and we are doing that. And that means people have to wait for care. Our emergency rooms are packed. I’m sorry, they are.”

Dr. Holmen called the healthcare workers heroes for going above and beyond for 19 months of the pandemic fight.

“This is like a war. There are many of our caregivers and patients who are in their own version of a wartime setting every day. And it is a challenge. And you can hear that in the voices of our providers.”

He says the current surge and months of battling the pandemic have drained CentraCare’s staff.

“That has created an extraordinary demand on our systems. What it means is that we are pushing ourselves to do more. If you are used to running at X number of miles an hour, how can you go twice as fast? And of course, that is not only a problem from a volume perspective, but people are running out of gas.”

CentraCare COVID-19 Incident Commander Dr. George Morris says the CentraCare Health system converted space in other departments to meet ICU capacity, but he says there’s no more space they can convert.

“There are no more beds with the skilled people that we need to provide care at this point. If people come in, there’s a delay and we’ve had to delay or defer care. We’ve had to delay or defer people coming to our facility. We’re at that tipping point where there is not another bed or another room that we can find.

Dr. Morris says he is on the phone every day with healthcare providers in neighboring states who are also looking for hospital beds for sick patients.

As of Thursday afternoon, CentraCare Health says one out of every five people in the hospital is being treated for COVID. There are 85 patients in the ICU system-wide, with the majority of them at St. Cloud Hospital. Dr. Morris says 66% of ICU patients are being treated for COVID and 75% of those patients are on a ventilator.

Dr. Morris says 14.6% of COVID tests at their lab are turning up positive. That’s about 1,200 confirmed cases a week.

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