Planning for a Surge: What’s Happening Now

We are now more than 10 months into the COVID-19 pandemic and our positive patient numbers continue to rise. However, teams at each of our hospitals have been working diligently and coordinating efforts to prepare for this.

We have scalable surge plans in place systemwide that we are using to handle the influx, and it is helping us maintain operational continuity and provide care.

Where We Are Now

As we mentioned in a previous article, we developed a surge plan early on in the pandemic to handle an increase in COVID-19 patients throughout the system. It has three parts:

• Identifying bed space
• Developing a staffing plan
• Managing supplies and equipment

So far, this plan has helped us prevent most disruptions in services. Until the end of 2020, the eighth floor of CRMH, which can serve nearly 100 patients, has been home to most of our COVID-19 patients. Due to the rise in positive cases, we have now moved additional patients to the ninth floor of CRMH.

If the numbers continue to climb and near 130 patients, new COVID-19 patients will be placed on the tenth floor of CRMH. This will likely cause us to delay some elective procedures. However, we do not believe this will lead to pausing all elective procedures as we did in the early days of the pandemic.

“We’ve never had huge jumps in patients in just one day like some other larger cities have experienced,” said Mike Abbott, senior vice president of hospital operations at CMC. “Instead, we’ve seen a gradual increase in patients that, unfortunately, has never slowed down. Still, it has given us more time to prepare.” 

Our community hospitals have also experienced high census amid the pandemic. When they have issues with bed capacity, community hospitals can rely on our Transfer Center to locate placement for patients. We’ve been able to keep most of these patients within the health system, but there have been times when they are sent to other regional or state hospitals.

Managing supplies throughout the system remains an important piece of our surge planning as well. We are not experiencing PPE shortages right now.

You have risen to the occasion to handle the continuous rise in numbers and are working extremely hard to care for our community—from working extra hours to moving to new and less familiar areas of the hospitals where you are needed as part of our redeployment efforts. The response from frontline workers who are getting vaccinated is having a positive impact on staffing.

“Maintaining our operations without disruptions has not been easy,” Mike said. “Our success so far is a direct reflection of the many employees who have stepped up to serve our patients and our community in new ways. Their courage, compassion and commitment are the core of what they do everyday.”

Visit the coronavirus and vaccine hub for more information and resources on COVID-19 and what we're doing.