ST. LOUIS — With cases rising in Missouri and Illinois, hospitals may need to limit elective surgeries, like they did in the spring, to make room for COVID-19 patients.
"We have patients waiting in the emergency departments, waiting for ICU beds. We have patients being transferred in from different locations. We are at a tipping point right now," Dr. Alex Garza with the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force told 5 On Your Side.
That tipping point, a surge of hospitalizations, is why BJC Health is rolling back elective procedures. Starting Nov. 9, the hospital group will be limiting surgeries that require overnight stays, opting to save those beds for possible COVID patients.
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The hospitals included in the rollback are Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Christian Hospital, Memorial Hospital Belleville and Missouri Baptist Medical Center. BJC Health will re-evaluate the return of all elective procedures after Nov. 20.
Dr. Garza says it could be a matter of time before more hospitals will have to follow suit.
"If we continue on the slope that we are on right now with the number of hospital admissions that we are seeing, then inevitably we are going to get to that point where most of the health care systems are going to have to start rationing back on elective procedures," he said. "Anything that we can do to conserve a bed."
Dr. Garza says it's important to remember that having available beds is one thing, but having enough staff to take care of the people in them.
He told 5 On Your Side that doctors, nurses and other caregivers are coming down with COVID, leaving a deficit in hospital staffing.
"If I have 100 beds, but I only have staff for 10 of them, I essentially have 10 beds. The other 90 are basically a mattress with wheels on it," he said. "So it's not a hospital bed until I can take care of a patient."
According to the St. Louis Metropolitan Task Force briefing Friday afternoon, area hospitals are nearing 85 to 95% capacity.
Elective surgeries are procedures that can be scheduled in advance and often time provide for a better quality of life. They include having tonsils removed and repairing sports injuries.
"Some of them are diagnostic tests or preventative tests that we should be doing in order to prevent disease down the road," Dr. Garza explains, "It's really a lose-lose scenario."