Last month Salem hospital was so full it had to from the emergency room for a few hours, the first time that鈥檚 happened since 2008.
One explanation is the number of people who delayed care during the pandemic, and are now facing serious health issues.
鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing sicker and sicker patients that are staying longer in the hospital than what they did pre pandemic,鈥� says Cheryl Wolfe, the CEO of Salem Health Hospitals and Clinics.
Another major issue is staffing, both at hospitals and at other facilities patients might be sent to.
鈥淲e have patients in our hospital that we have to keep because we have no skilled bed or adult foster bed that we can send them to,鈥� says Wolfe. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not well enough to go home. They have to go someplace. So we end up holding those [patients]. Pre-pandemic, it was about 30 patients a day that we were holding, and now we鈥檙e holding 90.鈥�
Becky Hultberg, the CEO of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, says in some ways we鈥檙e only now of the pandemic on our healthcare systems.
鈥淚f you think about COVID-19 as an earthquake,鈥� says Hultberg, 鈥渨hat we鈥檙e experiencing now are the aftershocks. And the aftershocks at times can be as destabilizing as the initial event.鈥�
, the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems is asking the state to fund temporary staffing for hospitals and for long-term skilled nursing facilities. In addition, the association would like to see the legislature make it easier for out-of-state workers to practice in Oregon.
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