PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Overburdened health care systems from Texas to Florida are pleading with Western Pennsylvania hospitals to take on transfer patients at record-high rates as beds and ventilators reach capacity in covid-19 hot spots across the country.
”They’re running out of space, and they’re looking for help in trying to deal with some of those patients,” Highmark Health CEO David Holmberg told the Tribune-Review by phone Thursday afternoon.
Dr. Donald Whiting, chief medical officer of Highmark’s medical provider arm, Allegheny Health Network, said that this past Saturday and Sunday the health system experienced a “busy weekend for regional and national referral requests.”
The 14-hospital system headquartered in Downtown Pittsburgh has been fielding a surge in transfer requests from physicians in states where coronavirus cases and deaths are proliferating, including Oklahoma, Florida and North Carolina. Many patients have severe health needs other than covid, but they cannot be treated where they live because local facilities are full or lack sufficient resources or staffing.
”We’re seeing brain tumors and heart attacks in patients that normally would stay in the community where they live, but they can’t because their community is feeling the effect of that (covid) surge,” said Dr. Maggie Thieman, medical director of AHN’s physician-to-physician transfer and referral center. “As covid numbers rise, those patients take up the beds of patients who are suffering from something that has nothing to do with covid. It’s a domino effect.”
Thieman described a recent influx in “desperate attempts to get patients moved to a facility that can meet even basic medical needs.” In one example, a health system near the Oklahoma and Kansas border already had contacted about 115 facilities in its region to transfer a patient in critical need before requesting help from Highmark’s Allegheny Health Network. All the other providers were either filled to capacity or closed to transfers across state lines.
”This is alarming to us because communities far, far away are impacting us already, right now,” Thieman said. “The effects are more far-reaching this time than the first time around (in spring 2020).”
Highmark executives boasted during a quarterly financial performance presentation Thursday that in many ways, Highmark Health is better prepared to withstand the pandemic, both clinically and financially, than it was prior to covid-19 striking Pennsylvania last March.
”Our financials are strong and steady,” said Holmberg, “and we’re prepared to deal with the unknown.”
