OMAHA, Neb. (KGFW) – Dr. Cliff Robertson from CHI Health in Omaha hosted a conference Tuesday to address concerns surrounding hospital capacity. On CHI’s end, Dr. Robertson had some data to share.
“While we are seeing more patients admitted to the hospital than we did four to five weeks ago, our data is showing rolling waves of more and less infections needing hospitalization.”
Hospital capacity management isn’t a new practice for hospitals. Dr. Robertson explains the daily routine for admissions and releases.
“We manage hospital capacity day in and day out, hour by hour and sometimes minute by minute. For example, in our hospitals in Lincoln and Omaha we discharged over 150 patients from the hospital Monday. We have around 1,100 staffed beds and average between 150 and 200 plus discharges and a roughly equal number of admissions every day.”
To address case increases, Dr. Robertson takes a look at peak numbers over the past seven months.
“In Omaha we’ve got less capacity than we do in Lincoln, Kearney and Grand Island. That’s not atypical for an organization (CHI Health) like ours that has 14 hospitals to have different demand levels occur in different communities at the same time. Back in the spring when we had infections in central Nebraska, we had less capacity in Kearney and Grand Island than we did in Lincoln and Omaha. Today we have more patients in hospitals in the Omaha metro than we do out in the rest of the state.”
Reviewing all of this information, Dr. Robertson wants to ensure that the public shouldn’t feel the need to panic, their health is in good hands.
“We’ve got some of the best health care in the country just in our region. They are perfectly capable of providing the care that our communities will need. I strongly encourage people not to panic. That doesn’t mean you can ignore the things we know lessen the spread of this virus, but there’s no reason to panic at this point for sure.”
Dr. Robertson says managing hospital capacity has been done for decades, COVID-19 isn’t new to him in that regard
