Salem Township Hospital is seeing a jump in inpatients and greater outpatient usage as a result of the growing number of COVID-19 cases across the area.
Hospital President and CEO Alex Nazarian says while the facility is not near capacity, staffing has become an issue.
“We have difficulties finding staff. We have open positions and have had difficulties recruiting new staff. And occasionally we have staff members out either for suspected COVID cases or true cases as well.”
Nazarian says as number of patients go up, the number of staff has to increase as well. Normally, they have backup through a company that provides temporary staffing of nurses but they are also having difficulty meeting the need.
Nazarian says the daily number of inpatients in July has doubled from last July to 11. For the month, the hospital had 120 more inpatient days compared to last year. Nazarian estimates 25-percent of inpatients are now from COVID-19 related problems. The hospital has a total of 22 inpatient beds and three ICU units. The hospital board was told Wednesday all three of the ICU units now have negative airflow along with one room in the emergency room which helps handle COVID cases.
Nazarian says the emergency room is being kept busy as well.
“We go through test kids as if there is no tomorrow and there is a shortage nationwide so we are always on the lookout for purchasing extra kits.”
Nazarian says the surge in COVID cases hasn’t had a major impact on other hospital usage, with the number of surgeries being performed up 11 compared to last July.
The hospital had a positive bottom line of $560,000 for July. The hospital wrote off $9,600 in services for the month to charity care.
Hospital employees received a bonus for July due to their hard work and bringing up satisfaction scores above their goal. Inpatient satisfaction increased to 94.7-percent, outpatient services to 96-percent and emergency room to 89-percent. The average score across all areas was 87-percent.
