Marshall Browning and COVID-19: 'Much worse than the worst moments of 2020'

Thanks to traveling nurses who have arrived in Du Quoin from as far away as Texas, Florida, Ohio, Georgia and northern Illinois, Marshall Browning Hospital is able to take a bit of a breather.

Before the reinforcements arrived, the hospital was in the position of occasionally having to turn away patients, as people sick with COVID-19 were all but overrunning the facility. Medical staffers were working overtime, supervisors will filling in on shifts - but even that wasn't enough.

COVID patients, explained Chief Nursing Officer Stephanie Hall, take a lot more effort to care for and are "higher acuity" than normal patients. Frequently, they are sicker than the patients MB is usually dealing with, but there is often no place to transfer them to.

"Everybody is exhausted, everybody is stressed, but we have been doing so much better since support got here from IEMA (Illinois Emergency Management Agency)," Hall said. "Everybody was working extra shifts, picking up shifts, managers were filling in."

Marshall Browning appealed to IEMA for help, and got a half-dozen trained nurses from a traveling nurse agency that IEMA contracts with. They will stay for up to 12 weeks, and be paid through the state, not Marshall Browning.

Southern Illinois Healthcare, the largest hospital chain in southern Illinois, announced last week they are also expecting reinforcements from the IEMA.

At Marshall Browning, while the additional staff helps with the running of the hospital, COVID-19 is still causing serious problems. The sickest patients - the ones who need ICU care - can't automatically transfer to a local hospital with an ICU, as most of those beds are already filled.

Marshall Browning has successfully gotten patients to ICUs in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and one or two to northern Illinois, but sometimes MB makes call after call, searching for an open ICU bed, and can't find one.

"It isn't just COVID patients who are suffering without these transfers," Hall said. "You can't get a bed for anybody, not just COVID patients."

Some patients wait for three to four days before getting the transfer; some never get the transfer. In those cases, Marshall Browning keeps them and does the best it can for them.

Marshall Browning originally had four beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients; they have now expanded that to nine. The walls are movable.

Normally, a patient in need of ventilation is transferred to an ICU, but the issue is getting the transfer. Marshall Browning is OK for ventilators, as a C-PAP machine or a bypass machine can be converted to a ventilator.

How does the current situation compare to the worst moments of the pandemic in 2020?

"It's much worse than the worst moments of 2020," Hall said flatly.

"In 2020 it was mostly elderly people we were seeing. Now, we are seeing much sicker young people."

Almost all of the COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated; Pam Logan, director of marketing for Marshall Browning, can remember only one or two patients with COVID who were vaccinated.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has ordered all health care workers to be vaccinated or face COVID tests at least once a week. Hall said that's not much of an issue at Marshall Browning, where the medical staff has seen the effects of COVID-19 up close.

"We have such a high vaccination rate because people see it first hand," she said.

In general the number of patients at Marshall Browning are increasing, including emergency room visits. August had 100 more ER visits than July.

"That's not all COVID but a lot of it is," Logan said. Meanwhile, "Urgent Care is getting slammed, because they are doing most of our testing," Hall added.

The other problem that has developed recently is the wait time for getting COVID tests back has lengthened considerably.

Elective surgeries are still being scheduled, but every patient has to be COVID-19 tested first.