BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – Staffing remains one of the most problematic issues for area hospitals as the coronavirus hospitalization numbers continue to spike.
"We're at a function of all hands on deck," Marty Boryszak, the Senior Vice President of Acute Care at Catholic Health, said. "For us, it's really a function of the volume and net-new need. The increase in the number of hospitalizations are driving the demand and addition for additional resources."
Western New York set a new record with COVID-19 hospitalizations, with 501 reported by the state on Tuesday. 27% of hospital beds are still available, including 49% of ICU beds. Hospitalizations in the region have increased substantially at area hospitals. 99 people were in the hospital because of coronavirus on November 5. Barely a month later, there is roughly five times as many people in a hospital.
Governor Cuomo on Monday called for hospitals to expand their bed capacity by 25%. It has not been an issue for local hospitals to meet that order.
"We already had plans based on the 50% requirement in the spring to increase those beds and we actually increased our ICU beds by 11 beds," Tom Quatroche, President and CEO at ECMC, said. "We're fine in regards to the 25% and have actually identified places in which we have patients in different areas. Some of those are units we have not been using for inpatients and had been for observation patients, so we'll be able to use those."
There are 50 employees at ECMC who are currently unable to work because of coronavirus. However, Quatroche said other reasons why employees are out are because of issues related to child care and because some have compromised immune system.
Catholic Health, meanwhile, has approximately 10,000 employees. Boryszak said one of the issues is that the frontline workers are exhausted from long hours.
"This is the second wave and a lot of time it's the same folks that have been dealing with the same disease for the better part of eight or nine months," Boryszak said. "To go through a second wave where the volume is higher and maybe we do know more, but that doesn't change the fact that day in and day out, our frontline staff is in PPE for the entirety of their shift.
It's very difficult. There's 8, 9, 12 hour shifts plus the extra time they're picking up. The emotional toll it takes on our frontline can't be overstated."
Both ECMC and Catholic Health said there has been some retired doctors and nurses who have come out of retirement to aid the hospitals, though there are not many.
Many health care workers await news on vaccine distribution for the hospital systems. There has been no indication of when the vaccines will be readily available for hospitals. New York State is due to receive 170,000 vaccines next Tuesday which will be given to nursing home residents and staff. Boryszak said Catholic Health is currently working on a plan for distribution once vaccines are available for health care workers.
In the meantime, hospital leaders remain worried about what the next few weeks will mean for hospitals.
"This is a time for unprecedented collaboration," Quatroche said. "We're all worried and we're all preparing for it."
