Quote:
Originally Posted by zoltan
"During the virus’s first peak in April, the majority of patients testing positive in the Methodist hospital system were older than 50. Now the majority are, like Ms. Estrada, relatively young. Nearly one-third of intensive care patients are now under 50, much higher than in the initial coronavirus surge.
The stress on medical institutions burst into public view last week, when Texas Medical Center — a downtown cluster of Houston’s major public and private hospitals, including Methodist — announced that the baseline intensive care unit capacity across its hospitals was full, with 28 percent of beds occupied by virus patients. That was nearly twice a threshold established by the state, which called for I.C.U.s to have a maximum 15 percent of virus patients for hospitals to resume elective services."
I heard an official from the Texas hospital system (I forget who or where I heard it, but it was the actual hospital admin speaking) saying that we are always going to have 90ish% usage of ICU, because that is our target usage. If we get more beds open than desired, we put the next worst patient from genpop into ICU. Simply the best use of resources.