BOSTON — Citing a ‘critical’ need, the state is taking new steps to give hospitals more flexibility when it comes to meeting staffing and patient capacity issues.
The moves by the Department of Public Health will reduce certain non-essential, elective services and procedures by 50 percent, effective December 15, 2021.
Back on November 23, the state reduced certain non-essential, elective services and procedures by 30 percent.
The Baker Administration said Friday that a “critical staffing shortage” has contributed to the loss of approximately 500 medical/surgical and ICU hospital beds and that hospitals are seeing a high level of patients, mostly due to non-COVID related reasons.
“In order to assure hospital inpatient capacity, the Department of Public Health also today issued a COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Order that provides hospitals flexibility with respect to ICU nursing staff ratios and guidance that permits hospitals to create capacity in alternate spaces.” according to the statement from the Baker Administration.
“The Commonwealth’s hospitals continue to face significant challenges due to staffing shortages,” said Secretary Marylou Sudders. “Today’s actions will help alleviate pressures by providing hospitals with staffing flexibility in order to reopen inpatient capacity in licensed and alternate space not currently being utilized.”
The state says added flexibility relative to staffing ratios will allow hospitals to redirect ICU nurses to other inpatient beds, currently not being utilized due to staffing problems and to staff roles that help to reduce or prevent hospitalizations.
DPH also released updates to “alternate care space guidance,” which allows hospitals to:
-Use licensed and unlicensed space for non-invasive outpatient care (previously, this was limited to COVID-19 vaccination, flu vaccination, and monoclonal antibody therapy administration).
-Use alternate licensed inpatient spaces to care for medical/surgical and ICU adult patients through March 31, 2022. Without this action, this state says this flexibility would have expired on December 31, 2021.
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