I2: Number of patients that cannot be served by the ICU increases with increasing COVID-19 patient arrivals
When reaching 25 COVID-19 arrivals per day, the hospital will need to transfer out at least 1 COVID-19 and more than 3 routine patients in need of critical care after waiting 12 hours to be admitted to the ICU per day on average. At 105 COVID-19 arrivals per day, as high as an average of 8 COVID-19 and 5 routine patients per day may need to be transferred. This reflects a range of daily average routine ED arrivals of between 50 and 200. Together, the daily average routine and COVID-19 patients that cannot be served in the ICU are expected to be as high as 67% of the ICU’s total bed capacity.
The model replicated a typical US urban 200-bed tertiary hospital with:
- 20 ICU beds shared between COVID-19 and routine patient arrivals
- 25 critical decision unit beds
- 70 isolation rooms (taking 50 of the internal general ward (IGW) beds)
- Separate COVID-19 entry
- 10% COVID-19 patients to ICU with average 9-day stay in ICU (2.8 realized average ICU stay for routine patients)
COVID-19 Care Paths & Assumptions (pdf)
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