Mount Nittany Medical Center Cancels All Elective Surgeries through January
STATE COLLEGE, PA – Mount Nittany Medical Center announced Wednesday the hospital is cancelling all elective surgeries through January. Dr. Nirmal Joshi, Mount Nittany’s chief medical officer, said the Centre County facility has seen an “alarming” increase in COVID-19 patients. That number, approaching 70 patients, amounts to nearly 40 percent of current patients.
Mount Nittany offered further information in this announcement:
Mount Nittany Medical Center currently has 60 COVID positive inpatients, ages 29 to 100. To date, there have been 239 COVID positive patients admitted to the Medical Center this month, with an average of 48 COVID positive inpatients per day. However, in the past seven days, the average daily census has jumped to 57 COVID positive inpatients per day.
By comparison, in November, a total of 143 COVID positive patients were admitted, with an average of 22 COVID positive inpatients per day.
“We reached record numbers of COVID positive admissions this week, spiking at nearly 70 inpatients several times over the past few days. Today, nearly 40 percent of our total inpatients are COVID positive and it’s very possible that the numbers will continue to climb. Our local trends continue to be alarming. It is important to be clear that the continued high number of COVID cases in the community means we cannot provide our normal range of services.
We are doing everything that we can to preserve as many services as possible, but like every other hospital and healthcare system, there are limits.
Last week, we announced a long-term reduction in surgical care. Because of the spike in daily census of COVID positive inpatients, we are making additional reductions in surgical care services. Through January, we are canceling all elective surgeries and procedures, which includes elective cardiac procedures at the Medical Center. We will continue to provide emergency surgical care and cardiac care. Although we are not making changes to the outpatient surgery center at this time, we will continue to monitor and evaluate our ability to continue normal operations.
Daily monitoring will continue and it’s possible further reductions will be needed as we adjust and balance care for COVID hospitalized patients and those needing other types of medical care unless we see the cases go down.
While we are hopeful of the promises of the vaccine and actively immunizing our employees, medical staff and a limited number of community healthcare workers, it is critical that the current level of community spread is reduced in order to preserve local access to critical health services.
It is uncertain when vaccines will be available to the general public, so please remain vigilant by consistently wearing a mask, frequent hand washing and maintaining social distance. These measures are especially important during the New Year holiday as we continue to see an alarming rise in COVID cases and subsequent hospitalizations” states Nirmal Joshi, MD, chief medical officer, Mount Nittany Health.
