By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The two hospitals in Lincoln County are not yet full of Covid-19 patients, but are struggling with staff shortages and not being able to send seriously ill patients to full Willamette Valley hospitals or recovering patients to local nursing homes or rehabilitation centers.
“We’re rapidly becoming our own island,” Dr. Lesley Ogden, chief executive officer of Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport and Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln City told county commissioners Wednesday.
Because of that, Ogden said Samaritan Health Services:
- Received approval from the Oregon Health Authority to work with two national staffing agencies to provide up to 26 temporary medical staff at North Lincoln and 32 temporary medical staff at Pacific Communities hospitals. But those agencies are also struggling to find medical staff, Ogden said, so “we will take whatever they have” in a “rolling fashion” beginning Tuesday.
- Is working with the OHA to see if the two hospitals can get some of the 1,200 Oregon National Guard members that Gov. Kate Brown activated this month to help perform non-clinical work in hospitals across the state.
- If the National Guard is not available, 1,000 Samaritan corporate employees from the chain’s five hospitals and headquarters have “agreed to help us wherever they can,” Ogden said.
- If conditions continue to worsen, will invoke a recent OHA change allowing medical staff who have tested positive for Covid-19 to return to work prior to the end of their 5- or 10-day quarantine period – but letting patients and other hospital employees know.
County commissioners asked Ogden for a briefing of Samaritan’s hospital and clinic operations Wednesday to hear how they were faring during a deluge of new omicron cases this month. As of Wednesday, there have been 1,680 reported Covid-19 cases in the county so far this month, easily more than double the number of the worst month of 2021. Because of the growing use of in-home Covid-19 tests, health officials think the actual number is two to four times that.
What commissioners heard was sobering.
Daily staff shortages
While patients who enter the hospital with omicron are faring better, the number of ill staff – and demand for testing – has overwhelmed care systems locally, Ogden said. Hospitalizations rose last week across Oregon and are expected to peak next week.
Ogden said each of Samaritan’s two hospitals are generally short 15 medical providers each day because of positive Covid-19 tests, despite 96 percent of all employees having been vaccinated.
“This particular variant is taking down our staff,” Ogden said. They are minor cases, she said, but still require time off work to quarantine or care for family members who are ill.
If it worsens, the situation could lead to the two hospitals slowing or postponing most elective surgeries.
“We don’t have the amount of staff to continue our current level of service,” she said.
On Wednesday, 15 of 16 in-patient beds and all four intensive care unit beds were occupied at Samaritan’s hospital in Lincoln City, which has been full or nearly full for much of the past two weeks. In Newport, 19 of 25 in-patient beds and four of six ICU beds were occupied, about normal for the past two weeks.
But Samaritan in Lincoln County cannot send more severely ill people to higher-level hospitals in Corvallis, Eugene, Salem or Portland because they are also either full or understaffed, Ogden said.
And, long-term care facilities and rehabilitation centers in Lincoln County are no longer taking new patients because of their own staffing issues. That means people who would normally be discharged from the hospital but are still too ill to go home have nowhere to go.
“There are very few (rehabilitation) facilities in rural areas,” Ogden said. “And, they are really at an impasse because of their own staffing issues. They’ve basically frozen accepting new patients. We’re ‘boarding’ in our emergency rooms … and can’t find beds elsewhere.
“It’s a big problem with patient movement. We just can’t do it.”
To help combat that, Ogden said next week its Lincoln City hospital will open space in its emergency room and elsewhere to create areas to board more patients it can’t move or send home.
“We know this is temporary,” she said. “We will get through this surge.”
Samaritan also had to change its “no appointment” drive-through testing system Jan. 11 because the two hospital sites were being overwhelmed with 350 tests a day. Now appointments are required, allowing it to handle 250 tests a day.
“A lot of people were not happy … and I agree with them,” Ogden said. “But we could not keep our head above water.”
She said testing “is under control now” because of the change and that the hospitals will drop the appointment requirement when the omicron surge subsides.
Schools “precarious” also
Lincoln County School District officials said this week that the district remains “in a precarious position with staffing” due to the high number of absences of employees and the number of permanent positions that are still unfilled. Human Resources director Tiana Tucker said it is seeing 25-30 teachers out daily for the usual winter illnesses, positive Covid-19 tests or to care for ill children or elderly parents.
The district has some substitutes and is paying teachers extra to give up their preparation time to add a class, but is usually unable to replace 4-6 teacher daily absences.
“This means other teachers and administrators are covering those unfilled absences,” Tucker said.
“We have already closed some infant child care and are on the verge of closing our preschools due to a lack of staffing,” Tucker said. “We are actively hiring and some schools have permanent substitutes assigned only to their buildings to help manage the daily absences in addition to what our substitute contract company provides on a daily basis.”
Tucker said the district is also short 50 classified employees.
- Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com