Long-term care problems cause challenges for hospitals

January 19, 2023

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to strain our healthcare system. In our region, there’s a backlog of patients because of a shortage of long-term care facility resources.

The OHA says statewide hospital capacity has been improving as cases of RSV, the flu, and Covid decline. But it says there are still pockets of high hospitalizations around the state. Hospital leaders say this is putting extra pressure on them to act as a safety net.

“We spend hours moving pieces around to make space for each patient coming in when we know it will never be nearly enough because patients won’t discharge or leave the health care system for extended periods of time,” said Amanda Kotler, Chief Nursing Officer at Asante.

Read the full story from Fox 26 here.