California imposes new health order requiring hospitals with available capacity to accept transfer of patients

The California Department of Public Health on Tuesday ordered counties with available intensive care facilities to accept the transfer of patients from overburdened regions, an interim measure aimed at easing pressure on facilities that are yielding under the pressure of the latest increase.

The new health order issued on Tuesday night comes amid declining availability of critical care in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, where hospitals are suffering from the influx of new cases of coronaviruses spurred by health meetings. holiday. Both regions report 0% availability of intensive care, according to state metrics for counting ICU beds.

“When hospitals are overloaded and crowded, they are no longer able to provide the traditional standards of care that we expect, but if health resources are available elsewhere, we must ensure that Californians can receive adequate care,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, director of California public health, said in a statement.

The order requires municipalities with many available ICU beds to accept patients from hospitals that have reached a level of crisis care, which means that they are not able to properly treat all patients and need to ration resources. Patient transfers can begin immediately and must be done “competently and safely”, as requested. Transfers can occur anywhere in the state.

It was not immediately clear how the order would affect the Bay Area, where some counties have wide availability of ICUs.

While hospitals faced an accelerated crisis in ICU beds in late December, the state warned that overloaded facilities were at risk of deteriorating to crisis care standards, where staff “would have to make difficult choices about distribution treatment ”to patients.

The order also requires hospitals in the areas most affected by the outbreak to stop elective surgery. Municipalities in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley with less than 10% of the ICU’s capacity are required to postpone non-essential surgery. Urgent medical procedures considered life-saving, however, may continue in these counties.

“We must ensure that our entire health system does everything possible to prevent our hospitals from changing to crisis care standards for people seriously ill with COVID-19 or other critical medical conditions,” said Aragón.

Chronicle writer Erin Allday contributed to this report.