Washington County: Not Pretty

From KUER:

“When I look at the trend, what I see happening in the hospital, I think it’s hard to not call this a surge event,” said Dr. Patrick Carroll, the medical director at Dixie Regional Medical Center.

The surge comes one week after the state epidemiologist warned that such an event could take place in Southwest Utah.

The Utah Department of Health recommends that hospitals should not exceed a 60% occupancy rate during the pandemic to create a buffer for a potential surge.

In a press briefing on Thursday afternoon, Carroll said that Dixie Regional, which is the biggest hospital in the area, has now surpassed that threshold.

He added that the hospital still has enough beds and has not yet implemented any of its surge contingency plans. But it may have to if current trends continue.

“This is community spread,” he said. “These are not cases that are all coming from exposure outside of Southern Utah or outside of Washington County.”

Another key shift Carroll identified is that most of the COVID-19 patients receiving care at Dixie Regional are Washington County residents ...

I hate to say I told you so, but I did ... ten days ago to be exact.

BTW: The Iron County numbers took a turn for the worse on Thursday. More on that in another post.

Please keep in mind that, for all we complain about the U.S. healthcare system, what all that money buys us is extra capacity. While the situation in New York City was/is tragic, and while there were widespread worries about ventilator shortages and PPE shortages, we never got as far as triaging patients ... like they did in Italy.

So, that 60% number cited above implies that they expect to fill 40% of the hospital with COVID-19 patients. Further, that 60% is a tad below their average capacity of 63% (found here). DRMC has 32 ICU beds, 132 additional beds, and is licensed to add up to 81 more. So there you go: they feel they might need 13 ICU beds, and 53 additional beds just for COVID-19 patients. Currently, there are 17 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the 4 county Southwest Utah Health Department's region (of course, that's mostly Washington County).