HOUSTON — With headlines like this one, it’s time for a refresher about how the Texas Medical Center shares data about ICU bed capacity and occupancy.
During a spike in hospitalizations last June, the Med Center provided a daily update on TMC ICU Bed Capacity And Occupancy. At the time, CEO Bill McKeon said the goal was to illustrate that ICU space is flexible, but that it also has limits.
The document provides a lot of information, including the total capacity for each phase.
As of Aug. 10, Phase 1 has 1330 ICU beds. This is the level at which the Med Center always operated pre-pandemic. To address the overwhelming need for intensive care, Phases 2 (373 beds) and 3 (504 beds) were created. All together, that’s 2207 beds.
The overview also illustrates how many total beds are occupied right now (1,430) and how many of those are COVID-19 positive (464).
Along with daily reports of ICU bed capacity and occupancy, the Med Center offers a weekly average of how this stacks up.
(Some context: TMC hospitals admitted 354 new COVID-19 positive patients on Aug. 10. Compare that to last week’s average of 320 a day and last month's average of 58 a day. The numbers are only growing.)
Right now, the weekly average shows 100 percent of Phase 1 ICU beds in the Med Center are full. Of those, 35 percent are COVID-19 patients. Combining all three phases, 65 percent of ICU beds are occupied, 21 percent of which are COVID-19 patients.
The chart does stress that there’s room to expand. Medical/surgical beds can be converted to ICU beds by delaying some procedures. That’s why Gov. Abbott asked doctors earlier this week to hold off on elective surgeries.
So why are seeing headlines about only 27 ICU beds available in the greater Houston area?
The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that there are just 27 staffed ICU beds in what’s called Trauma Service Area Q, which covers Harris and eight other counties with a population of nearly 7 million.
So the Med Center says it has the capacity, but it’s still unclear whether staff is available for those beds. Gov. Abbott mentioned earlier this week that the State Health Department is working to bring in out-of-state medical professionals to help with the surge.