Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Western New York is headed toward phase two of reopening from a coronavirus shutdown as soon as Tuesday, and hospitalizations resulting from COVID-19 is one of the metrics all regions across New York State are being judged by in determining reopening status. Those numbers have been encouraging for the western region of the state in recent days as hospitals continue to manage COVID-19 cases, but on a declining basis.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, regional hospital operators have implemented plans to maintain bed and ICU availability and look back at their successful efforts at keeping major hospitals open and operating smoothly.
Both Catholic Health and Kaleida Health say they used some creative methods to maintain bed capacity as they dealt with coronavirus and the potential surge.
Catholic Health's Mark Sullivan says hospitals were caring for patients as they normally did. "Whatever surge was coming from COVID was taxing the traditional health care model in WNY. So Catholic Health sat down and said we can't use a traditonal approach. What unique way can we deliver care and ensure our bed census is there, and that's when we created the first COVID only hospital in the country at St. Joseph's in Cheektowaga. That enabled us to decompress all of our other hospitals. As of today, we have two COVID patients at our hospitals, and we've cared for more than 700 at the St. Joseph's campus," says Sullivan. Sullivan says the same thing was done with a first in the state COVID only nursing home, which allowed discharges from St. Joseph's to the nursing home facility.
When it came to preparing for a potential surge, Lane says the hospitals mobilized units in different ways. "Be it additional ICU beds or telemetry beds, we increased our capacity to handle that. At one point, we had ten units to treat patients, we're down to three units, which is great to see," says Lane. "We took an inventory of beds from an availability and capability standpoint, we're looking throughout the hospital for where that inventory was and having it readily available, and bringing in new equipment if need be. We brought in 100 new beds in the event of the surge."