As omicron strains KY health care, some hospitals are suspending non-urgent procedures

As COVID-19 continues to burn through Kentucky, infecting thousands more people each day and straining health care systems, some hospitals are again suspending non-urgent procedures to free up staff and resources.

Baptist Health Richmond on Tuesday morning announced it was suspending all elective procedures “due to an increase in patient volumes attributed to the current COVID-19 surge.”

Chief Medical Officer Erica Gregonis said the hospital was taking the step “to protect our patients while working to conserve resources, equipment and clinical staff to care for the most urgent and time-sensitive patient needs.”

The suspension goes into effect Wednesday. A procedure is considered elective if it can be delayed for 30 days “without significant risk or harm to the patient,” according to Baptist. The hospital will still perform urgent and emergency procedures, as well as biopsies, CT and MRI scans, and X-rays.

A spokesperson for the hospital did not clarify how long the suspension will last, just that “clinical leadership is continually monitoring patient volumes with the goal to resume elective procedures as soon as it’s appropriate.”

The shift in care offered at the Richmond hospital is a testament to how strapped health care systems are, yet again, in Kentucky, where the statewide rate of people testing positive for COVID-19 is has surpassed 33%. Because many more Kentuckians are taking at-home coronavirus tests, experts believe the true positivity rate is much higher. A little over 55% of the state population is fully vaccinated, and 22% have received a booster shot.

On Monday, administrators from each of Lexington’s hospitals said their staff, too, were struggling under crushing patient loads attributable to the omicron surge. Physicians with Baptist Health Lexington and UK HealthCare said their COVID-19 patient occupancy was near or had exceeded peak patient volumes logged during the delta wave.

To accommodate this flood of patients, Baptist Health Lexington began limiting elective procedures earlier this month, said Dr. Mark Dougherty, infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist.

Anticipating yet another surge of largely unvaccinated patients requiring hospitalization from omicron, the most contagious COVID-19 variant to date, the hospital formally restricted elective surgeries pre-emptively in early January.

“We had a limited staff, we needed to prepare ourselves to take care of more COVID patients,” Dougherty said. “Now we’ve gone to limiting all elective procedures, and we’re making a decision on that on a week-by-week basis.

UK HealthCare, which includes Albert B. Chandler Hospital and Good Samaritan, has not “officially limited” elective surgeries, said Dr. Ashley Montgomery-Yates, chief medical officer for inpatient and emergency services. But since the delta surge in the summer, “I honestly am not sure we ever got all our operating rooms up and running full force because we are so understaffed,” she said.

Persistent staffing shortages are plaguing hospitals across Kentucky, and each infection spike of COVID-19 has exacerbated the dearth of health care workers, all agreed.

“All the health care systems are strained to the max,” Dougherty said Monday.

Dogged and dead-tired health care workers are again begging people to get a vaccine and booster shot in order to end the mass circulation of this variant.

“I know our community and our nation are tired of this nightmare,” Kristie Whitlatch, CEO and president of King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, wrote in a January 21 Facebook post.

“The fatigue shows as people try to pretend it isn’t happening; are unable to move forward; or mock it,” she said. “Sadly, we are now at the point that people are taking their anger and their frustrations out on the healthcare workers who are just trying to care for you and about you.”

Whitlatch pleaded with residents to continue taking precautions by wearing a mask, avoiding large gatherings and getting vaccinated, even though she knows many still refuse to listen.

“These are the true things. They are key to beating the virus,” she said. “But I am enough of a realist to know this plea, two years into the pandemic, is unlikely to change the hearts and minds of the skeptical. Still, I will ask.”