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Oregon COVID-19 hospitalizations increase 500%, officials request out-of-state help

Every day since Aug. 10, Oregon has set a record for new COVID-19 hospitalizations.

On Thursday morning, there were 845 COVID-19 patients being treated in hospitals. Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen says that's more than a 500% increase since July 19.

"I want to be honest, the situation in Oregon hospitals is growing increasingly dire," Allen said.

A majority of these patients hospitalized are unvaccinated, and it's having a devastating ripple effect.

"Oregonians sick with COVID-19, nearly all of them unvaccinated, are filling hospital beds in record numbers, and this poses a critical threat to all Oregonians in need of hospital care," Dr. Dean Sidelinger, Oregon's state health officer, said.

Sidelinger says the unvaccinated are risking their own health and the health of loved ones and strangers alike.

State leaders are urging people to get vaccinated and not shying away from blaming people who won't get vaccinated.

"I need to be direct about what’s causing this crisis, a growing wave of unvaccinated patients who have become so seriously sick with the Delta variant they need to be hospitalized," Allen said. "Hospitals are converting outpatient rooms to medical surgical rooms or ICU beds. Patients are parked in hallways. Staffing is critically short."



On Thursday morning, Allen said 200 patients were waiting in emergency departments across the state for a bed.

Dr. Jeff Absalon, the chief physician executive for St. Charles Health System in central Oregon, says they've had to cancel or postpone 3,000 scheduled surgeries because hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

"These are not cosmetic surgeries," Absalon said. "These are very necessary, critical surgeries for the patients that we serve. These are patients that have cancer, heart disease, neurological disease, surgeries that are necessary to preserve life and function, and they’re being delayed right now. So, quite simply put, and I don’t want to mince my words, we are rationing care."

Absalon says what his health system is going through is "unimaginable."

"Our frontline health care workers that have been caring for patients every day are exhausted. They are burned out, and we’re in a pandemic that many of us regard, at this time, as largely preventable," he said.

Oregon is now leaning on other states and the federal government for help.

Director Allen says the state has asked FEMA for a mobile hospital.

"We’re keeping Oregon’s congressional delegation informed while we continue discussions with our federal partners," Allen said. "We understand that many other states are facing even worse challenges than Oregon, but we will continue to pursue federal help despite the competing demands for these limited resources."



FEMA will send 24 EMTs to the state to help at emergency departments. That assistance is expected to arrive in four days. The EMTs will work in six hospitals in Jackson, Josephine, Deschutes and Douglas counties.

Additionally, state leaders are requesting 35 physicians, 35 advanced practice providers, 300 registered nurses, 10 paramedics and 100 respiratory therapists from other states. Those workers would be deployed to central and southern Oregon.



The state is also now asking long-term care facilities to help with hospital overflow.

"Skilled nursing facilities and rehabilitation centers will stand up surge and decompression beds in high impact regions to help hospital patients who are waiting for discharge to other facilities where they can continue to safely recover," Allen explained, adding that eight crisis nurse teams will come to help those long-term care facilities.

Absalon says health care workers are dealing with what's called "moral injury." That injury is what health care workers feel when they can't help the patients right in front of them the way they need to. Absalon says his health system has 800 open positions. Those who are working are treating COVID-19 patients both in denial and desperate.

"We’ve also had patients coming into our hospitals that don’t believe in COVID-19 disease, that are diagnosed with the disease. They don’t believe in it," Absalon said. "Then there are those who didn’t believe in COVID-19 or didn’t believe in vaccinations until they were in our care, gasping for their last breath of air, and became believers and later encourage their family members to get vaccinated."

Absalon and other health care leaders are urging people to get vaccinated, saying although there have been breakthrough cases, the vaccine is the best way to prevent severe disease and hospitalization.

"If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated," Absalon pleaded. "It’s exactly what needs to happen. This is the way out of this pandemic. There's strong science behind these vaccines."

https://katu.com/news/coronavirus/o...rease-500-officials-request-out-of-state-help

 

The Cost Of Being Unvaccinated Just Went Up
Topline
With highly effective coronavirus vaccines available and hospital admissions soaring, many Covid-19 patients are facing bigger bills as most insurance companies have ended waivers on out-of-pocket costs that they introduced earlier in the pandemic, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a cost that will be primarily borne by the unvaccinated people more likely to require hospital treatment.


Healthcare workers put on personal protective [+] [-]
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Key Facts
Earlier in the pandemic, the vast majority of private health insurers voluntarily waived out-of-pocket costs for Covid-19 treatment, meaning some 88% of people with insurance coverage would have paid nothing if hospitalized.

With no federal mandate requiring insurers to waive these costs, few regulations requiring them to do so at the state level and the wide availability of effective vaccines, the majority have now passed these costs back to patients, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Of the two largest health plans in each state and Washington, D.C., nearly three-quarters (72%) are now passing out-of-pocket costs—including copays and payments towards deductibles—for Covid-19 treatment back to patients, KFF found.

The 102 providers studied represent 62% of enrollment across fully insured individual and group markets, KFF said.

Almost half of the insurers studied had terminated waivers by April, roughly the time all adults in the country became eligible for a vaccine, and the majority of those still eating the costs—nearly a quarter of the the insurers studied—intend to stop by the end of the year.

Of the remainder, two plans (around 2% of the total) have waivers set to expire by March 2022 and just five (around 5%) do not specify when waivers will expire.

Key Background
While Covid-19 vaccines and most coronavirus tests are supposed to be free, Americans hospitalized with coronavirus can still be billed for care. Even with comprehensive coverage, the usual suite of deductibles, copayments and coinsurance apply, and many of those admitted to a hospital have received surprise bills of astronomical sizes upon leaving. With Covid-19 cases and hospital admissions surging—primarily among unvaccinated people across the country—and waivers coming to an end, it is likely that many people will be receiving bills for treatment. New waivers are possible—some due to expire in October are pegged to the ending of the federal Public Health Emergency—though perhaps unlikely given the availability of free vaccines that are highly effective at preventing serious illness and hospitalization. Many believe vaccine holdouts should have to pay more for their health insurance and employers are reportedly considering raising premiums to try and employees to get the shot. Polling suggests Americans are neatly divided on the issue, with around half (49%) in favor of employers charging unvaccinated people more for insurance. Of those opposing, 73% were not vaccinated.


Tangent
Just over half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19. The vast majority of those hospitalized with the infection have not received it. Almost all of those dying from Covid-19 have not. Not all are eligible for vaccination, however, and hospitals are filling up with record numbers of children suffering from the disease and younger people who may not have been eligible for the shot for very long.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robert...-patients-as-covid-hospitalizations-soar/amp/