Hospitals approaching and declaring crisis care levels

SALISBURY, Md. – Hospitals across Delmarva are on the frontlines of the Omicron Variant surge, with many declaring crisis care standards or on the verge of doing so.

Crisis care standards mean that resources are shifted from other departments to help deal with a large number of incoming patients. TidalHealth Peninsula Regional and Nanticoke have both stated they are shifting to crisis care standards and are increasing their staffing, while also increasing the number of patients each staff member cares for.

The hospital system CEO says they have temporarily closed a number of Cardiac Rehab clinics so that the staff can help care for patients in the hospital.

“We’ve made the decision to close those sites temporarily for the next 3 weeks so we can re-deploy those team members into the hospital to help nursing staff and the emergency department up on the floors take care of patients,” said Tidal Health CEO Steve Leonard.

Leonard tells us based on the number of patients they are seeing, he believes they may stay at crisis care levels for weeks. Meanwhile, Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin is not operating at crisis care levels, but they say that’s a decision they make daily based on a number of factors. Their Vice President tells 47 ABC, the most important factor they consider is the amount of staff they have to care for patients.

“What we look at is the number of nursing staff we have available to care for the patients that we have,” said Atlantic General Vice President Dr. Sally Dowling.

Dr. Dowling also says her hospital freed up staff by pausing all elective, non-critical surgeries. She says surgeries for cancer patients and other critical procedures are not included in the pause. She also says currently all in-patient beds are filled, with new COVID-19 patients being shifted into the emergency department.

Beebe Healthcare in Lewes announced Wednesday they would be pausing all non-emergent surgeries, a level above elective surgeries.