MILWAUKEE – Hospital beds in Wisconsin are filling up fast, and it’s mostly due to COVID-19. That’s according to Dr. John Raymond, President and CEO at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
“About 97 percent of our intensive care unit beds in the state are occupied, and about a third of those are with COVID-19 patients who require intensive care,” Dr. Raymond said Tuesday on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News.
“In terms of overall hospital bed utilization, we’re at about 93 percent capacity, which again is a little bit higher than we experienced during the worst phase of the surge which we experienced a year ago.”
“These are really unprecedented numbers, just in terms of the stress on our system.”
About 20% of overall hospitalizations across Wisconsin right now are due to COVID-19.
“Now people may say ‘gee, that doesn’t sound so bad,’ but hospitals are designed to function most efficiently and effectively when you have capacity left. So 80, 85 percent… that’s the sweet spot,” Dr. Raymond said.
“You start getting much over that and people get backed up in emergency rooms, there are diversions from one hospital to another and sometimes we’re not able to provide the kind of care we need to people with cancer, strokes, heart attacks… the other things that hospitals routinely take care of. So we are in a rather precarious situation here in Wisconsin.”
Dr. John Raymond was a guest on the Health and Economy Briefing on Wisconsin’s Afternoon News. You can listen to his entire interview in the player at the top of the page.