JASPER, Ind (WEHT) Due to the increased hospital patient counts and limited capacity of resources, Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center will be postponing all elective and non-urgent surgical procedures that would require a patient to stay overnight beginning Monday and extending for at least the next two weeks.
“We do continue to provide emergency services, trauma services, and other same day surgery procedures that we’ve been doing. As you can imagine these are limited to those cases that can be safely postponed without harm to the patient,” Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Stan Tretter, said.
Hospital officials say they will re-evaluate additional extensions depending on bed availability,
staffing, and hospital patient counts. Tretter said part of the issue stems from an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
“What we’ve seen in our numbers is the majority of covid patients who are hospitalized are indeed unvaccinated. Typically about ninety percent of our hospitalizations are unvaccinated individuals,” Tretter said.
Emergent cases and elective procedures that if not performed
could result in negative patient outcomes will proceed.
At this time, they will also proceed with cases in which same day discharge is expected; however, this may be re-evaluated as well if hospital circumstances change.
