As Grand Island Cases Increase, Health Officials Expand Capacity and Patient Transfer Options

Grand Island is preparing for a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations. As case numbers escalate, local health officials have responded by expanding hospital capacity and bolstering plans to transfer patients out of town for care if needed.

St. Francis Hospital in Grand Island can currently provide breathing support to 27 COVID-19 patients. Around 13 of those ventilators are currently in use.

Concerns around the city's potential need for more hospital beds and respiratory equipment have fueled efforts to bolster local healthcare capacity: as of Tuesday afternoon, Grand Island’s case count is 184, with 214 total cases in Hall County. That number will likely increase in the coming days.

Hospital president Ed Holleran said the CHI Health Network, which owns St. Francis, has been successful in increasing the number of patients it can serve locally.

“As it comes to emergency preparedness, healthcare does this regularly," he said. "We are always conducting disaster drills, training exercises, always trying to predict what's next, what could be out there.”

St. Francis Hospital recently reopened its seventh floor, which houses extra beds; that's increased total capacity to 150 patients, up from around 100 during a typical flu season. At least 20 of them are occupied with confirmed COVID patients, while more unconfirmed patients are also being cared for.

Holleran said similar tactics can be used to expand the hospital's number of ventilators. Most CHI facilities have cancelled or aggressively downscaled all non-essential procedures, which has opened up some ventilators for temporary redistribution.

"We reached out to our division through our own incident command structure that we have...[saying] I'd like to increase my inventory on-site of ventilators by three," he said. "And within less than 24 hours, I had three ventilators from the Nebraska Heart Hospital sent out to Grand Island to put in my inventory."

And if Grand Island were to hit full capacity, St. Francis staffs its own ambulances for transferring possible overflow patients.

Providers statewide have also agreed to accept cases outside their own networks in an attempt to accommodate surges. Governor Pete Ricketts said that plan has already been implemented in some cases; an outbreak at the Carter House longterm care facility in Blair forced residents to relocate to nearby facilities for monitoring.

"Part of our plan was always to be able to move patients around, to take a statewide approach to our healthcare system," Gov. Ricketts said. "So we can leverage where we had capacity in one part of our state if we were coming up on our capacity in another part. And that's what we've done in Grand Island."

While the exact trajectory of COVID-19 in Grand Island remains to be seen, four patients have already been transferred from St. Francis Hospital to other centers in Omaha and Lincoln.