Elective surgeries halted at Carson Tahoe Hospital after COVID-19 influx
CARSON CITY, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center has taken a step back and temporarily stopped all elective surgeries. Officials made this decision because the hospital is seeing a second wave of COVID-19 cases.
Right now, officials are reporting the highest number of COVID-19 patients the hospital has seen all year. On top of that, the hospital also has an increase in patients like it always does this time of year. Those two reasons caused the hospital to reach around 90 percent capacity.
With COVID-19 cases on an upward trend, that means more possible COVID-19 hospitalizations. For example, Quad County active cases were around 100 last month and are at 190 today. For Carson Tahoe, there were 10 COVID-19 patients on days last month and a total of 16 today.
While the hospital has plenty of room for current and new patients, stopping non-time sensitive surgeries for a few weeks ensures a few extra beds incase things continue on this upward trend.
“Often time those non-urgent emergency surgeries will need to be hospitalized overnight and so by not doing those cases it allows us to have the beds available for those urgent emergent patients that do need to be hospitalized," said Michelle Joy, Chief Operation Officer at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center.
This is just one step of the hospital's surge capacity plan. A plan that aims to further expand patient capacity, if needed.
“We can’t predict what the number of cases are that are going to show positive next week or the week after but we know we can be proactive and be ready if we see this increase so that’s the focus on where we are now, so we don’t have to be reactionary next week or whenever," added Joy.
Officials do not know when elective surgeries will start again. It all depends on what the COVID -19 case trend does.
