Beacon hospitals reporting large number of COVID patients

Memorial Hospital

The hospital went on ambulance diversion to all adult patients on Thursday morning. Both the number of physical beds and the inability to appropriately staff overflow beds led to this action. 

The number of COVID-positive patients continues to be at or near a record high in addition to high volumes of trauma and other acutely ill patients.

We have rescheduled some procedures to maximize our ability to safely care for patients and anticipate that we will need to closely watch our capacity over the next few weeks.  It is likely that we will need to cancel and reschedule additional procedures moving forward.

Elkhart General Hospital

We continue to have an extremely high census of COVID-positive patients at Elkhart General Hospital and many more patients who are receiving evaluation and care in our Emergency Department. Earlier this week, we expanded inpatient beds to respond to the surge and this has helped us manage our volume of COVID patients. 

We are actively evaluating opportunities to further increase our inpatient beds in order to respond to the community need. COVID-related care is consuming many of our resources and we are closely evaluating our capacity to continue providing elective procedures and surgeries. We have had to transfer a few patients to other facilities within Elkhart County because of the COVID surge.

We expect this situation to continue in the foreseeable future given the increasing prevalence of COVID in the community.

What you can do to protect yourself and your loves one:

• Stay home if you are sick
• Get tested if you have symptoms of COVID-19
• Always take these precautions
  • Wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands
  • Don’t attend group gatherings
• Encourage your family, friends and the community to take the same precautions