RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — With about 80% of its ICU beds filled, Virginia Commonwealth University Health System will implement tighter restrictions on patient visitation Tuesday by limiting visits for adults without COVID-19 from noon to 8 p.m. only.
The current policy at VCU Health’s hospital in Richmond allows for only one person to visit a non-COVID-19 patient between 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The impending change on Tuesday will cut that window by four hours, VCU Health spokeswoman Laura Rossacher told 8News’ Kerri O’Brien.
Dr. David Lanning, the interim chief medical officer for VCU Medical Center, said the system has over 70 COVID-19 patients as of Monday and will have to reschedule some elective surgeries and shift an unknown number of appointments to telemedicine due to growing concerns over the strain on the hospital’s ICU.
“To open up more room and staffing, we are backing off on some of those elective procedure to decrease the overall census of the hospital,” Dr. Lanning told O’Brien. “We have just over 70 patients that are covid positive, about a third of those are in the ICU.”
VCU Health has also reported cases among its own staff, forcing the hospital to move healthcare workers to other departments to deal with the shortage.
“Some of our healthcare workers have had covid as well so some of those are out and not available to work and thus we had to redeploy team members from other areas such as the operating room,” Lanning said.
Over the weekend, about 93% of VCU Health’s adult ICU beds were taken up. On Monday afternoon, Rossacher confirmed that the capacity went from 93% to about 80%.
