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More Nebraskans are in the hospital with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic.
There are 483 active hospitalizations, a 43% increase over the last two weeks. Every hospital is working on ways to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed.
At McCook Community Hospital in southwest Nebraska, COVID-19 patients who need a ventilator are transferred to a larger facility.
But President and CEO Troy Bruntz says that system only works if there’s room on the other end of the transfer.
"We’ve had situations where we needed to transfer somebody out because they were going to need an ICU, and calling around our normal way of transferring a patient didn’t get anywhere," Bruntz said. "Not around this area; no larger facility was going to take that patient. And we had to use the hotline, which worked, but it took hours to work."
The hotline is a central resource for hospitals looking for another facility with room for a transfer.
At larger systems like CHI and Bryan Health, they’re hiring dozens of travelling nurses to fill in the gaps temporarily.
Bruntz says smaller hospitals are working on creative solutions, too. He’s been talking to other facilities about the possibility of swapping patients.
"As the hospitals like North Platte and Kearney start getting fuller and fuller, the question is: of their patients, which ones could we be treating in our facility so that they had more staffing and more capacity for COVID patients that are much worse off?"
The surge in COVID-19 cases in Nebraska hasn’t been slowing down.
Bruntz says he’s confident in the healthcare system, but so much depends on the public following the rules we’ve all heard over and over again, like keeping a six foot distance and washing your hands.
And he says the best way to support healthcare workers is to wear a mask.