At the University of Mississippi Medical Center, healthcare workers are in short supply. Many workers have retired, sought higher-paying jobs, or continue to work but are at home in quarantine due to coronavirus exposure. At the hospital, around 55 beds are vacant as there is no staff to care for those extra patients. Dr. Alan Jones is Associate Vice Chancellor of Clinical Affairs at the medical center.
He says “At least right now if we had staff we have another unit we could open in terms of med-surge. And another unit we could open in terms of critical care. And so we still would have some capacity, physical space capacity, but we don’t have the staff available.”
Dr. Jones says at this time there are no plans to have federal or non-profit healthcare workers come into the state to assist hospitals.
An order has been signed by the state health officer to reinstate a partial system of care to address statewide staffing shortages. While previous orders limited all hospital transfers, this new order does allow for select patients with the most immediate needs to be transferred. Jonathan Wilson with the University of Mississippi Medical Center has been working with health officials to establish this program.
“In this scenario it would be targeted much to those type patients that Dr. Jones and Dr. Woodward were mentioning that need very specific levels of care, transplant or trauma, heart attacks, strokes that are time-limited and need very specific levels of ICU care. And we’ll be trying to manage the state’s capacity the best we can working with the health department in that way.”
Health experts say coronavirus vaccinations will be crucial to help limit transmission of the disease and protect the state’s healthcare system in the coming weeks. Hospital officials say this 5th surge in cases could begin to subside in late January or early February following such an extreme transmission rate.
