Hospital beds at Baptist Golden Triangle are freeing up from COVID-19 patients

In August 2021, patients were overflowing the rooms at hospitals around the state

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- COVID-19 case numbers have eased up in Mississippi in the last couple of weeks. Meaning hospitals have been able to free up beds and ICU rooms.

In August 2021, patients were overflowing the rooms at hospitals around the state.

Since the beginning of September 2021, the number of COVID-19 patients in Mississippi hospitals has dropped by half, from just over 1,400 to 700. The percentages are almost the same in Intensive Care Units, dropping from 470 to 244.

At Baptist Golden Triangle they had to call in some extra help when cases were booming.

“We were fortunate to get MEMA nurses in to help us in our critical care setting and our met surge setting and then also our progressive care area. We also implemented some of our strategies from our COVID search plan that our leadership developed along with our senior team and physician team,” said Baptist Golden Triangle Director for Inpatient Nursing Dr. Bridgett Alexander, Ph.D.

Although COVID case numbers have lowered; freeing up hospital rooms of coronavirus patients. Alexander said the rooms at Baptist Golden Triangle have still been pretty full.

“Even though our COVID numbers have decreased in the last couple of weeks. We still have remained at capacity for our hospital setting just other disease processes,” said Alexander.

If cases begin to surge again the baptist team has a plan to address the capacity and workload.

“We will revisit our COVID-19 surge plan that was developed it looks at staffing and capacity. We also have staffing meetings throughout the day; we have weekly meetings with our leadership team just evaluating what is our capacity, what are our discharges are our staffing needs,” said Alexander.

Nurses and doctors put in long hours a day in and day out especially when the hospital is full.

“We do promote work-life balance for our staff. They’re able to take PTO (personal time off) we actually encourage them to take PTO because we understand self-care is so important and they are only as best as they are for themselves; so once they’re great then they can come and provide optimal patient care for our patients,” said Alexander.

Alexander and other officials do encourage those that may have COVID-19 symptoms to go to Baptist Memorial Group to get tested rather than the emergency room.