Chicago-area hospitals delaying elective surgeries, as Illinois sees record number of COVID-19 hospitalizations
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Chicago-area hospitals are postponing many elective surgeries, as Illinois on Sunday set a record for COVID-19 hospitalizations.
The news of postponed surgeries comes just days after Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Health and Hospital Association urged hospitals to delay nonemergency procedures as needed, without risking patient harm. They issued the plea in anticipation of a post-holiday, omicron-driven surge and potential shortage of staffed intensive-care beds.
Chicago-area hospitals are stressed as they deal with influxes of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients amid industrywide staffing shortages. The vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, doctors say.
NorthShore University HealthSystem, which has six hospitals, has largely suspended elective surgeries for the next two weeks, said CEO and President J.P. Gallagher.
Advocate Aurora Health, which has 26 hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin, is delaying and rescheduling certain procedures to times and places where it has the staffing and capacity to perform them, said Dr. Jeff Bahr, chief medical group officer. It is continuing to do surgeries in situations where not performing them might result in a person needing hospitalization, or losing a limb. Advocate is also continuing to perform cancer treatments and diagnoses, he said.
Edward-Elmhurst Health, which has hospitals in Elmhurst and Naperville, is not scheduling any additional elective surgeries until mid-January, said President and CEO Mary Lou Mastro.
Sinai Chicago, University of Chicago Medicine and Rush have also started delaying some elective surgeries.
Though the term “elective” may bring to mind cosmetic surgeries and other optional procedures, it actually encompasses a wide range of necessary, if not emergency, treatments — everything from heart valve replacements and repairs of herniated discs to certain cancer therapies.
Delaying elective surgeries can help keep hospital beds open, but it can also mean prolonged pain and illness for people who were supposed to undergo them. Elective surgeries were suspended in Illinois during the early days of the pandemic as well as at many hospitals during a surge last winter, before COVID-19 vaccines were available.
“It’s a day-by-day (situation),” Mastro said. “We all know that delaying elective surgery can have unintended consequences.”
Leaders in some states, such as New York, have ordered hospitals that fall below certain capacities to suspend elective surgeries. During this latest surge, Pritzker has stopped short of doing that in Illinois, saying facilities in different parts of the state are in a better position to assess their capacity and the needs of their patients.
“Very early on in the pandemic, we had to move very quickly to make sure that hospital beds were available,” Pritzker said during a news conference Monday at the Thompson Center in the Loop. “And so we just had an across-the-board, temporary suspension of elective surgeries. Now what we’re doing is getting the hospitals to make the decisions themselves, and they’re doing it.”
Pritzker brushed aside the idea that his reelection bid this year is the reason he isn’t taking more drastic steps, such as ordering hospitals to suspend elective procedures altogether, or creating a statewide proof-of-vaccination requirement like the ones that just went into effect in Chicago and suburban Cook County.
“I just think that at this point, we have vaccines available, we have treatments available, we have masks available. We put in place a tough regime of indoor masks,” Pritzker said, though he applauded the city and county for requiring customers to show proof of vaccination at restaurants and certain businesses.
Despite hospitalizations continuing to rise, Pritzker said the state has no plans to open field hospitals such as the one set up briefly at McCormick Place in spring 2020.
The state is now seeing more new positive cases of COVID-19 each day and more patients with COVID-19 filling hospital beds than at any other point in the pandemic.
Statewide, there were 6,294 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, surpassing the previous peak of 6,175 on Nov. 20, 2020. Over the past seven days, there have been an average of 5,822 coronavirus patients in Illinois hospitals, approaching the record of 6,119 set in November 2020.
Across its hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin, Advocate Aurora has about 1,491 patients who are hospitalized with COVID-19 — about double the number it had just a month ago, said Mary Beth Kingston, chief nursing officer, during an Advocate news conference.
“Beds are very tight and wait times are long,” Kingston said.
Delays in elective surgeries may vary across Advocate Aurora, depending on rates of COVID-19 in local communities and resources, Bahr said.
“We are creating space to care for that higher need population,” Bahr said. “We’re asking for every community’s patience with that.”
Delaying elective surgeries is just one way Illinois hospitals are trying to manage the surge of patients.
NorthShore is again dedicating its inpatient beds at Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview to only COVID-19 patients, Gallagher said. It’s generally sending COVID-19 patients who need hospitalization, across most of its system, to Glenbrook — something NorthShore did earlier in the pandemic as well.
Rush University Medical Center has again transformed its lobby into an expansion of its emergency department.
Hospitals are also, in some cases, redeploying staff and paying extra to nurses who pick up additional shifts.
“I was really, really hoping we could be in a better place to start off the new year, but the changing of the calendar gives us the opportunity to renew our fight against COVID-19,” said Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “We do know how to prevent further spread of the disease. It’s the same old, same old: Get vaccinated, get boosted, wear your mask, avoid crowds, get tested.”
