PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Several major hospitals in Portland are curtailing some elective surgeries amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Sciences University and Kaiser Permanente Northwest are instituting new limits on surgeries to keep hospital beds free. Oregon’s daily case rate passed 800 for the first time Wednesday, and Gov. Kate Brown says the state is at a “crossroads.”
State health officials said Tuesday that COVID hospitalizations were up 57% over the previous week and 83% over the past four weeks. It can take days or weeks for people with COVID to require hospitalization.
Officials with Kaiser Permanente, OHSU and Legacy Health confirmed their decisions to KOIN 6 News.
Kaiser Permanente
“We are pausing scheduling non-urgent and non-emergent surgical services at Sunnyside and Westside Medical Centers through December 31,” a spokesperson told KOIN 6 News by email.
“We have also begun postponing some selected non-urgent inpatient surgeries that require an overnight hospital stay in order to maintain bed capacity for a projected increase in COVID-19 patients. This is being evaluated on a week by week basis.
“Through scheduling and selective postponements, we are reducing surgeries at the hospitals by about 20 percent. This does not include our Ambulatory Surgical Centers or other procedures that take place at our medical office buildings.”
Legacy Health
“Starting today, we are reducing the number of elected surgeries that require a hospital stay by 25% across all of our hospitals for the next two weeks. This reduction does NOT impact elective surgeries or outpatient procedures that do not require a post-op hospital stay,” Legacy spokesperson Brian Terret said. “We want to build in some capacity in case we see a surge in COVID-19 patients. Right now, COVID-19 patients only account for about 5% of our hospitalized patients. A majority of our patients are in for many other reasons, and none are flu-related. Legacy will continue to monitor the situation and make adjustments as needed.”
OHSU
In a statement, OHSU chief medical officer and senior vice president Dr. Renee Edwards said, “OHSU has set a threshold for the number of elective surgeries we are performing that require a hospital stay for recovery so we can maintain appropriate capacity to care for all the patients we serve. We are evaluating this on a day by day basis. The threshold, which we created early in the summer as part of our surge planning, fluctuates day to day based on prior day admissions and discharges. We first implemented the threshold at the end of last week.”
KOIN 6 News contributed to this report.