NEW ORLEANS — At Lakeview Regional Medical Center in Covington, more than a third of acute care patients are COVID-related and the emergency department is stretching thin.
“This is very real and we need to focus on what we can do to improve the situation,” said Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jacques Guillot.
Dr. Guillot says because COVID patients are filling up the emergency department, it’s getting harder to accept people in need of other emergent care, especially when being transferred from smaller hospitals that don’t have specialized doctors or equipment.
“We’ve had people with heart attacks that needed treatment, people with strokes at other places that needed treatment and we just don’t have the room to take them in,” Dr. Guillot said.
In St. Tammany Parish, patient transports through Acadian Ambulance are up 20 percent, often with nowhere to go.
"There are many cases where we can’t get them into the hospital. There are no beds in the hospital. Please realize that,” said Acadian Ambulance Community Relations Supervisor Dwain Meche.
Dr. Jeffery Elder, Medical Director for Emergency Management at LCMC Health in New Orleans, says that creates an internal balancing act within hospitals across the state.
“That’s the challenge we’re dealing with now,” Dr. Elder said. “It’s been harder for us to transfer patients amongst hospitals because we just don’t always have the beds available even at the larger hospitals to take some of these patients.”
Dr. Elder says the difference with this COVID surge compared to the last three is folks not staying in as much.
“Now, people are out and about going about their lives, so we’re seeing our usual volume of patients in the emergency department,” Dr. Elder said.
Combined with a COVID surge across the Gulf South, Dr. Elder says patients may have to be sent to hospitals further away than normal to get the care they need. However, he says all of it is preventable.
“Now’s the time,” Dr. Elder said. “Masking and getting vaccinated, that’s what’s going to get us past this.”