By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — If you drove by Hutchinson Regional Medical Center over the weekend, you may have seen a tent up outside the emergency department.
"This is a triage tent or a mass casualty tent that we keep, and many hospitals have them, for extra square footage in case they need more capability," said Chuck Welch with the hospital. "If there's any sort of a natural disaster, or in this case, we just need extra square footage to hold, maybe, extra visitors. If we go to extended restrictions at the hospital, to where we're not allowing visitors in the hospital any more, family members may bring in somebody to the ED and this may be a warm spot for them to sit and wait outside the hospital, rather than having to sit in their car."
The hospital is actively considering further restrictions on visitors due to the COVID caseload.
"We're talking about that every day," Welch said. "As the caseload, as the COVID caseload continues to go up and we have to pull nursing resources and respiratory care and staffing resources from other areas to take care of our COVID patients, that becomes more and more of a consideration."
The numbers are just getting to be too much for the staff they have.
"At one point over the weekend, we had 41 positive COVID cases in the hospital," Welch said. "To say that we are stretched at this point would be an understatement. We are scrambling to try to find staff. Today, we are at 33 positive COVID patients."
The number of intubated and ventilated patients fluctuate anywhere from six to ten and change multiple times a day as people come on and off of that treatment.