Shari Rudavsky|Indianapolis Star
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As hospitals across the state fill to capacity with both COVID and non-COVID patients,
Indiana National Guard teams are providing staff support in 13 hospitals around the state with "several others" expected to join them next week, Indiana Department of Health officials said in an email.
Thursdayofficials from Indiana University Health, the state's largest hospital system,saidthey haverequested the Indiana National Guard's assistance for most of its facilities across the state.
Six-person IndianaNational Guard teams, consisting of two clinical and four non-clinical members, will deploy to hospitals in two week stints to support over-stretched staff members. IU Health asked that a team be sent tomost IU Health hospitals except for Riley Hospital for Children.
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Teams are currently deployed to IU Health Ball Memorial, IU Health Paoli, IU Health Bloomington, IU Health Morgan, IU Health Saxony and IU Health Bedford, according to state health officials. Indiana Guard members have also been sent to Marion General Hospital, Deaconness Gateway and Midtown Hospitals, Logansport State Hospital, Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Evansville Hospital and Goshen Health.
This is not the first time that the Indiana Guard has helped hospitals with staffing needs during the pandemic. During the fall delta surge, the Indiana Guard in conjunction with the Indiana Department of Health, sent teams to a number of facilities, including Ascension St. Vincent on 86th Street, Deaconess Midtown and Deaconess Gateway hospitals in Evansville and Clark Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville.
Indiana Guard members are also currently providing assistance at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's vaccination and testing clinic.
IU Health officials said that their hospitals are seeing “all-time highs” of both COVID and non-COVID patients.
Until now, however, they have not requested Indiana Guard assistance, said Dr. Chris Weaver, chief clinical officer.
Currently about 430 people are hospitalized in IU Health facilities with COVID, an increase of about 65 in the past week, said Dr. Paul Calkins, associate chief medical officer. The vast majority of these are unvaccinated.
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Hospitals across the country are facing work shortages as health care workers are reporting burnout and leaving the profession.
"We are tired, our people are incredibly tired," Calkins said. "You can only do this so long just before it becomes draining."
While a common misperception exists that vaccine mandates at hospitals have contributed to the problem, earlier this week hospital officials at many Indiana hospitals disputed that characterization, saying very few employees have left for that reason.
IU Health's Weaver said that only about 125 of the health care system's 36,000 employees left because of the vaccine mandate. Most of those, he said, were part-time or less than part-time, so the total full-time employee impact came closer to 60 and of those only "a very small number" were clinical staff.
Most health care organizations did lose a handful of their employees, said Dr. Robin Ledyard, Community Health Network’s chief medical officer, however many of those who left were not in patient-facing roles.
“I think that it’s something people like to talk about, to use as an excuse, to see this as a preventable thing, you brought this on yourself,” Ledyard said of the argument that hospitals are facing workforce shortages because of vaccine mandates. “This is not factually true.”
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Hospital officials agree what is factually true is that staff members are stressed and strained more than ever before. December, always a high-capacity month for hospitals because of respiratory illnesses, has been complicated farther by a sudden upswing in COVID-19 cases.
On Wednesday, the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 hit 2,755, exceeding the number hospitalized at any point during the delta surge
In the hospitals where Indiana Guard members are deployed, clinical service members may help treat patients while non-clinical members will offer logistical support.
All Indiana Guard members are fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, it's not clear whether the omicron variant — if and when it arrives — could throw a wrinkle into the works, either increasing or decreasing cases.
IU Health's Calkins isn't thinking about that now.
"This is all delta. We don’t have time to worry about omicron," he said. "We’ve got to deal with delta. When omicron gets here, we’ll deal with it then."
Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.
