As health officials in Colorado warn of "mounting pressure" on the healthcare system, Colorado hospitals are still accepting COVID-19 transfer patients from nearby states, reports CBS4.
While about 80 percent of the state's intensive care beds are full, a Colorado emergency room doctor warned the station that capacity issues are also related to staffing shortages, not just physical bed space.
"If things worsen, this could become the most complex game of musical chairs ever with more and more patients ending up hundreds of miles away from home/family, despite our dashboards showing we still have plenty of 'capacity,'" the physician said.
A total of 25 COVID-19 patients from Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana have recently been transferred to Colorado hospitals. That's less than 3 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state, Cara Welch, a spokesperson for the Colorado Hospital Association, told CBS4. State hospitals consider their service areas to include "surrounding states, especially for hospitals near the border," Ms. Welch said.
University of Colorado Health said it's accepted eight COVID-19 patients from four nearby states, and that its first priority is caring for patients within the state.
"If our overall capacity was at a level where we were worried we might not be able to care for patients in Colorado, then we wouldn't accept out-of-state transfer requests," Dan Weaver, UCHealth's vice president of communications, told CBS4.