Prisma Health says its coronavirus hospitalizations have doubled in a month
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep South Carolina, one of the state’s largest health care systems has seen hospitalizations from COVID-19 more than double over the past month and is taking action to avoid a potential staff shortage.
Prisma Health, which has locations in the Midlands and the Upstate, has “successfully cared for” more than 1,500 coronavirus patients, according to a release from Dr. Scott Sasser, incident commander for Prisma’s COVID-19 response. As of Thursday, the system as a whole had more than 300 in-patients in hospitals who either were suspected or confirmed to have the virus.
That’s compared to 143 coronavirus patients as of June 23.
“We continue to have bed capacity as well as adequate medical supplies and personal protective equipment needed to care for our patients and team members,” Sasser said in the email.
The increase is roughly in line with the state’s overall trend in hospitalizations — the Department of Health and Environmental Control reported 824 COVID patients on June 23 and 1,723 on Thursday.
DHEC reported that the state’s total number of hospitalizations surpassed 1,000 on June 29 and 1,500 on July 14.
On July 18, DHEC announced it was transitioning from the CDC’s reporting system to a different federal database under the Department of Health and Human Services, as dictated by the federal government. That resulted in a gap where data was either unavailable or limited in detail and only estimated to be accurate within 10%.
On Thursday, DHEC issued its first report from the new database but noted that accuracy is expected to improve over time and that at least one hospital system had an issue in reporting data in the new system.
The upward climb in occupancy and coronavirus hospitalizations is threatening to stretch health systems, including Prisma. Sasser said in a statement that Prisma is looking to combat a potential staff shortage by bringing back furloughed nurses, training nurses to work in different capacities and hiring traveling nurses. The system has also hired more doctors, Sasser said.
In addition, Sasser said, Prisma will take advantage of new guidelines issued by DHEC and the Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation allowing nursing school graduates who haven’t been able to take their licensing exams during the pandemic to help in hospitals.
Prisma is planning to hire some of these graduates and pair them with more experienced nurses, Sasser said.
South Carolina has reported more than 76,000 total confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus — 1.48% of the state’s total population. DHEC has reported more than 1,400 new cases per day for more than two weeks now. During that time, the percentage of all tests coming back positive has stayed above 15%.
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 5:08 PM.
