The California Department of Public Health on Tuesday ordered counties with available intensive care capacity to accept transfer patients from overwhelmed regions, a stop-gap measure intended to relieve pressure on facilities buckling under the strain of the latest surge.
The new health order issued Tuesday night comes amid dwindling intensive care availability in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, where hospitals are straining under the influx of new coronavirus cases spurred by holiday gatherings. Both regions report 0% intensive care availability, according to state metrics for counting ICU beds.
“When hospitals are overwhelmed and overflowing, they are no longer able to provide the traditional standards of care we expect, but if health care resources are available elsewhere, we should ensure Californians can receive appropriate care,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, California’s director of public health, said in a statement.
The order requires that counties with plenty of available ICU beds accept patients from hospitals that have reached a crisis level of care, meaning they are not able to adequately treat all patients and have to ration resources. The patient transfers may begin immediately and must be done “capably and safely,” according to the order. Transfers may occur anywhere within the state.
It was not immediately clear how the order would affect the Bay Area, where some counties have ample ICU availability.
As hospitals grappled with an accelerating ICU bed crisis in late December, the state warned that overwhelmed facilities were at risk of deteriorating to crisis care standards, in which staff would “have to make hard choices about allocating treatments” to patients.
The order also requires hospitals in areas most affected by the surge to halt elective surgeries. Counties in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley with less than 10% ICU capacity are required to postpone non-essential surgeries. Urgent medical procedures considered life-saving, however, are allowed to continue in those counties.
“We must ensure our entire health care system does everything it can to prevent our hospitals from shifting to crisis care standards for people who are seriously ill with COVID-19 or other critical medical conditions,” Aragón said.
Chronicle Staff Writer Erin Allday contributed to this report.
Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NMishanec
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January 06, 2021 at 12:57PM
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California imposes new health order forcing hospitals with available capacity to accept transfer patients - San Francisco Chronicle
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