MINNEAPOLIS — Every day, hospitals across Minnesota are being pushed to the brink of ICU capacity due to a surge in COVID-19 cases but even when they run out of staffed beds, they don't run out of places to turn.
For months now, the former Midway Hospital in St Paul is where emergency departments have called when they have emergencies of their own.
"We are that 'phone a friend' option," said Karyn Baum, VP of System Clinical Operations for M Health Fairview. "When a hospital or an emergency department has tried their normal routes to find an intensive care unit bed and has not been able to, we're that call that they make so that we can help them and their patients."
In the spring, Baum and her team went from coordinating care and resources within the M Health Fairview system to providing a similar service to healthcare systems statewide. The team is now staffing Minnesota's Critical Care Coordination Center, or C4, which has been acting like mission control for the COVID-19 pandemic.
The team is constantly communicating with hospitals to monitor capacity across the state and to make sure all critical care patients, COVID or otherwise, find both a bed and the staff to care for them.
"It's a game of Tetris," Baum said. "You have to find the right bed at the right time for the right patient. You can have all the beds in the world but if you don't have a nurse, you can't do very much. Doctors are nice, but actually, nurses are pretty essential."
That's why, in the last month, the C4 team has also been pretty essential.
"There are times when it takes an hour and a half to two hours to find a patient a bed because things are so tight," said Mary Jo Huppert, director of inpatient care management. "We really want patients to be in the geographic area of where they're coming from, so they're close to their families and loved ones, but sometimes it's just not possible, and that's where it takes the additional time."
Often, patients in greater Minnesota need to be placed in the Twin Cities where more resources are available. On Sunday, C4 helped patients in Anoka and Carlton Counties find ICU care in Hennepin County, and patients in Chisago and Todd Counties find staffed beds in Ramsey County. But the team also helped a patient in Brown County find care over in Olmstead County. Sometimes their work crosses borders as well. A patient up in St Louis County, made it to an ICU in Fargo, North Dakota.
"The team was called to action and they stepped up to the plate to make sure that every patient, every time, found a place or found a solution to their ICU needs," Huppert said.
In November, C4 placed all 342 patients who might have otherwise struggled to find a bed, that's an average of more than 11 per day.
"It is getting better. I am thrilled to say, over the last five days we have placed 42 patients, so that is a slight reduction," Baum said.
State hospitalization and ICU numbers have also stopped breaking record highs in the last few days.
"It had been rising pretty quickly, but over the last week it's started to flatten out," Baum said. "So I'm really hopeful that that means people took heed and that the actions that the actions that the Governor took are really starting to flatten that curve."
Though they want to remind everyone that even one call to C4, is a sign that a patient and hospital need help.
"I am worried that people will have a false sense of security," Huppert said. "We're not out of risk yet and we need to continue to practice the social distancing."