With more people than ever hospitalized in Wisconsin due to COVID-19 the president of St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac says that’s just one factor that threatens hospital bed capacity this fall and winter. There are currently 11 people hospitalized at St. Agnes for COVID 19. But Katherine Vergos says it’s not just the number of COVID patients in the hospital. She says one of the challenges is discharging patients to long term care facilities that have stringent requirements related to admissions and COVID testing. Vergos says those patients end up staying in the hospital longer taking up hospital beds. She says more beds are being used as the hospital ramps up it’s procedures and elective surgeries, and there is also the impact on hospital staff. “…who are becoming COVID positive or are out in the community and are coming in contact with somebody who is COVID positive so they need to be quarantined,” Vergos told WFDL news. “There’s the stress of having staff being quarantined and not being able to be here, which can impacts patients we can take.” Vergos says the concern is the problem will only get worse with the flu season. Meanwhile, Vergos says the hospital has been feeling the heat from some members of the community after the hospitalized reinstituted visitor restrictions in an effort to prevent spread of the coronavirus. “There’s a lot of anger, frusration toward our door screeners related to the decisions we have to make. I just really need to ask our community to be kind, be thoughtful of the people working in our healthcare organization. The main reason we needed to make that decision ws to be able to keep our people here healthy to be able to take care of you.”
