Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant sets up tent outdoors for minor cases as patient volume increases

Sep. 9—A tent has been erected near the emergency department at Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant to help treat patients with minor issues as the overall number of patients increases, according to Chief Medical Officer Carol Fox.

Hospital officials also have enacted several less visible protocols in an effort to absorb the increased patient load and expand capacity.

Fox said the current patient level — including those with covid and those without — systemwide is "much higher" than during the peak of covid during the winter.

"It's not really that we're being overrun by covid ... but I think, in a good way, people who have respiratory concerns are realizing it could be covid and they want somebody to check it out," she said.

Excela Health has been in recent months seeing an increase in patients who have covid as well as those who are coming in for ailments or routine issues, as are other health systems in the region. Treatment of patients with noncovid ailments declined sharply in 2020, but those numbers have bounced back to pre-covid levels, Fox said.

The emergency departments at the health system's three hospitals — in Latrobe, Greensburg and Mt. Pleasant — have been busy this week, with cumulative patient levels that haven't been seen since 2019, Fox said.

"It was a day that there were a lot of incoming patients," she said.

But that shouldn't deter potential patients from seeking care, officials said. It's possible that tent space could be added at Westmoreland and Latrobe hospitals, if necessary.

Like most of the nation, Westmoreland County is seeing an increase once again in positive cases of the coronavirus. The more contagious delta variant is leading to increased hospitalizations among the unvaccinated across the country.

The number of covid patients at Excela's three hospitals increased tenfold from July to August. Of those current patients, 97% are unvaccinated, Fox said. Every covid patient on a ventilator has not been vaccinated.

The seven-day average of new virus cases in Westmoreland County was 107 on Thursday, compared with 29 on the same day in August and 4 in early July, according to state health department figures.

Forty-three people were patients at a hospital in the county Tuesday, compared with three on Aug. 1. That figure stood at 167 on Jan. 1. Fourteen county residents died of covid in the first nine days of September.

"I want people to understand that covid is here and they should take that seriously and wear masks and get vaccinated," Fox said.

Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta at 724-837-5374, rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .