Times Union: Hospitals Limit Non-Urgent Surgery as Coronavirus Surges in Albany Area

Leaders from several regional hospitals held a news conference on December 22, 2020, to update the community on the COVID-19 pandemic including vaccination efforts, record hospitalizations, and a pause on non-urgent surgeries. Steven Hanks, M.D., chief clinical officer for St. Peter’s Health Partners, appeared in the Times Union’s coverage of the event.

From the article:

Dr. Steven Hanks, chief clinical officer for St. Peter’s Health Partners, which has hospitals in Albany and Troy, said area hospitals do not anticipate anything so dramatic as having to open field hospitals to handle another COVID-19 surge. Beds are not the issue, he said.

“We’ve been asked, ‘Are there going to be enough beds?’ Just about all of us have the ability to almost double our number of beds,” he said. “We don’t believe we’re going to have a bed problem… What we’re worried about is our ability to staff those beds to care for that population of patients that we see is coming somewhere on the order of mid-January and into and around the Martin Luther King holiday, which is really where we feel it’s going to be the highest level of activity here in the Capital Region.”

…

Hospital leaders ended Tuesday’s news conference with a final plea for Capital Region residents to celebrate end-of-year holidays with members of their immediate households, or with extended family through virtual platforms.

“My plea to all of you is in this holiday season: may the music you listen to be, ‘There is no place like home alone for the holidays,’ because that’s really what the message needs to be, as sad a message as that is,” said Hanks. “But that’s the message that will keep us and our loved ones as safe as possible.”

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Steven Hanks, M.D., chief clinical officer for SPHP, appears at a news conference in Albany on Dec. 22, 2020.