Flu leading to suburban hospitals too crowded for ambulance patients

Three weeks into the new year, health officials say hospital emergency rooms are "inundated" with influenza-associated illnesses - so much so that some crowded hospitals even had to divert ambulances elsewhere for a short time.

Official statistics show intensive care unit admissions in hospitals are way up compared to the same time in the 2015-16 season. With a heavy influx of flu-related admissions on top of those involving people with other illnesses, some suburban hospitals in the past few weeks reached their capacity for available beds.

Among the latest to be temporarily at capacity was Amita Health Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village.

Across the state, the most recently available Illinois Department of Public Health data shows 1,032 hospital ICU admissions were logged in the third week of the peak flu season. That number compares to 89 in 2015-16.

Christine Budzinsky, vice president and chief nursing officer for three of Amita Health's hospitals, said ambulances could not be accepted at Alexian Brothers from 5:15 p.m. Wednesday until 5:15 a.m. Thursday due to crowding. She said the emergency room remained open to other patients during the ambulance bypass status.

Under state law, a hospital must meet certain criteria and notify the department of public health about the bypass status, along with communicating it to emergency medical services crews that typically use the facility in question. All hospitals have been updating bed occupancy numbers in a department of public health database that health care professionals monitor.

"It's very fluid," Budzinsky said Friday. "But the state has asked us to do it every four hours. This particular region is really being inundated with flu patients."

Department of Public Health officials did not immediately have a list of hospitals that have needed to go on the ambulance bypass status.

In the case of the Alexian Brothers bypass, an ambulance from Schaumburg would have gone to St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, Budzinsky said. An Elk Grove Village ambulance would have traveled instead to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights or Elmhurst Hospital.

State law mandates the Department of Public Health to investigate the circumstances that caused a hospital in an EMS system to go on bypass status to determine whether the facility's decision was reasonable.