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 Administrators say hospital staff shortages have been compounded in
the last month by medical practitioners isolating or quarantining as
they themselves are infected or exposed to the virus.
Hospital systems in nearly half of U.S. states including Maryland,
Virginia and Ohio have announced they would postpone elective
surgeries, a Reuters review of public statements and local media
reports found, and at least three state governments; New York,
Illinois, and Massachusetts, have implemented or recommended
state-wide delays.
Most of the areas where hospitals are suspending surgeries have seen
either a peak or surge in daily COVID-19 hospitalization rates
during December or January, data from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention show.
The Omicron surge has also forced the National Institutes of Health
to postpone elective surgeries at the largest hospital in the United
States devoted to clinical research, Reuters reported.
Suspending elective surgeries can create a backlog of cases, cause
millions of dollars in lost revenue for hospitals, and in some cases
lead to serious illness or deaths.
Care that is deemed elective can still be crucial, said Cynthia Cox,
vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Tens of thousands
more people than is typical died from non-COVID causes during the
pandemic and some of those deaths are believed to be related to
delayed care, she said.
"It's often cancer surgeries or other kinds of care that still needs
to happen in a very timely manner for people's safety and health,"
said Cox.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a Columbus-based
center with over 2,200 beds across multiple hospitals, is tabling
some non-urgent, elective surgeries requiring an overnight stay
after a spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations, said Dr. Timothy Pawlik,
chair of the Department of Surgery and surgeon in chief.
The seven-day average of daily new hospital admissions in Ohio is at
an all-time high, the most recent CDC data shows.
Johns Hopkins had to move one of its hospitals, the Johns Hopkins
Bayview Medical Center, into crisis protocols; delaying elective
surgeries and redirecting staff, spokesperson Danny Jacobs said.
The Baltimore hospital saw a 360% increase in patients hospitalized
with COVID-19 in December, the highest it has experienced since the
start of the pandemic, he said.
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 The Virginia Commonwealth
University Medical Center, which suspended
elective surgeries in its downtown Richmond,
Virginia hospital, said it did so due to
unprecedented demand for inpatient care driven
by the Omicron variant. SHY
RECOVERY, THEN OMICRON HIT
The seven-day average of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals was
up 60% from last week to 16,458 per day, CDC data shows, just 0.2%
shy from the national peak in hospital admissions exactly a year
ago.
Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows
that over 82% of ICU beds nationwide are currently in use as of
Thursday with over 27% in use for COVID-19 cases.
Elective surgeries had just begun to rebound this fall from the
delays and cancellations that began when the pandemic hit in March
of 2020.
U.S. hospitals lost an estimated $22.3 billion between March and May
of 2020 as a result of those cancellations, according to a January
2021 study published in the Annals of Surgery.
And now there are even fewer staff to handle both COVID patients and
those needing elective surgery.
Around 450,000 healthcare workers, or 3% of the industry's
workforce, quit between February 2020 and November 2021, U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics data show.
Many hospitals are only suspending specific procedures and for
shorter periods than during the early pandemic, said Akin Demehin,
director of policy at the American Hospital Association.
"Hospitals have learned from that experience to identify those
procedures that really do need to be done as quickly as possible and
that allows them to be a bit more nuanced and how they might
implement deferral or delays," said Demehin.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Caroline Humer and Lisa
Shumaker)
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