‘Close to being overrun.’ North Texas hospital that hit COVID capacity sends warning
A small rural hospital about an hour west of Fort Worth reported this week it reached capacity in its ICU and COVID-19 units, with so many patients that employees were for the first time in memory transferring some to higher-volume facilities to free up beds.
It served as an urgent warning to North Texas residents ahead of Thanksgiving that, without a flattening of the curve, more facilities of its size — and the larger facilities receiving their patients — could become full.
The Palo Pinto General Hospital, located in Mineral Wells, hit the limit in its ICU and COVID units on Tuesday afternoon, CEO Ross Korkmas said in a post on the hospital Facebook page. There are eight beds in the ICU, with six of them dedicated to the most severe COVID patients, according to Megan Hudson, the hospital public information officer. The COVID unit has 13 beds.
Korkmas said in a telephone interview on Wednesday the hospital reached a total of 51 patients this week, which is almost double the average patient load, and more than any employee can remember having. Though there are 74 beds in the entire three-floor hospital, Korkmas said they typically don’t have enough employees to staff every bed.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the ICU remained full, but the hospital was able to discharge about four people from the COVID unit and create available beds, Korkmas said. He noted, however, “by the time I hang up, I could have one” bed.
He expects there to be a spike after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, which could push healthcare systems across North Texas to their limits.
“I think we would be dangerously close to being overrun, and not just for our hospital but other hospitals in the metroplex and in neighboring rural towns,” Korkmas said. “Because we rely on the bigger hospitals to transfer patients into, and when the larger hospitals become full, the smaller hospitals can’t transfer patients out.”
The situation is “more fragile than people think,” he added, and the message the public needs to understand at this time is “we need everybody to do their part and start thinking of themselves as being on the frontlines in this fight.”
Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have risen to record levels in North Texas in recent weeks, leading to the elected judges of Dallas and Tarrant counties issuing grave warnings about large Thanksgiving gatherings. In Tarrant, COVID patients occupied about 20 percent of all hospital beds as of Wednesday, tying the pandemic high, according to public health data. The data will be updated again Sunday after the holidays.
Dallas and Tarrant counties were both deemed to be in the highest risk level for the virus as of Wednesday, according to a tool from Harvard University. So were Palo Pinto County, where the Palo Pinto General Hospital is located, and neighboring Parker County.
As of Wednesday, there were 116 available ICU beds across the 19-county North Texas Trauma Service Area that includes Dallas, Tarrant and Palo Pinto counties, according to online data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Korkmas said on Wednesday he was unable to say how many total patients his hospital has transferred so far due to crowing, though he noted they’ve been doing it during the recent surge in cases.
“It’s been a lot fewer lately just because we haven’t had the ability to transfer and we’ve been keeping a lot of patients here,” he said. “The DFW hospitals are still doing the best they can to help us, but we certainly have seen extra time it takes to get patients transferred.”
If someone were to need the services of the Palo Pinto ICU on Wednesday, Korkmas said, the hospital wouldn’t turn them away. They would hold the person in their ER, he said, to provide them with necessary care as they try to secure a transfer to another facility. They would keep the person even if that doesn’t pan out, waiting for an ICU bed to open up.
It’s the kind of scenario North Texas hospitals, both rural and urban, are preparing for ahead of Thanksgiving.
Korkmas said hospital officials had a regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday with leaders from the community like the county judge and the Mineral Wells mayor and city manager. They decided then the messaging the hospital has been putting out hasn’t been strong enough, and it was time to more accurately convey the reality of the situation.
In the post, Korkmas wrote, “I am asking for your help.” He told people to “wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands and please limit gatherings.”
He told the Star-Telegram he has faith in people, saying: “We’re Texans, man. We step up. If our neighbor asks us for sugar, we give them sugar.” He’s asking residents at this time, he said, to step up and help in the fight to slow the spread of COVID-19.
But he’s also aware there are people out there who have indicated they’re not afraid of the virus and don’t want it to control their life.
That thinking may miss the point, he said.
“They need to stop thinking about whether or not they care if they get COVID,” Korkmas said. “What they need to think about is that they may already have it and not know it. And if they had the opportunity to help protect their neighbor, or their grandmother, or a little kid at the grocery store by wearing a mask, what person wouldn’t step up and help?”
This story was originally published November 25, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
