The following is a summary of “Minnesota Medical Operations Coordination Center: A COVID-19 Statewide Response to Ensure Access to Critical Care and Medical-Surgical Beds,” published in the January 2024 issue of Pulmonology by Baum, et al.
COVID-19 caused inpatient capacity problems that had never been seen before, especially in ICUs. This led to the creation of statewide or regional placement centers to help move adult patients who needed critical care to hospitals that still had space. The Minnesota Medical Operations Coordination Centers (MOCC) was created to help move adult patients from the ICU to the hospital for medical and surgery procedures. It did not include cases of injuries, heart attack, stroke, burns, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The center was part of one health care system’s bed control center and had a phone line that was answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Major healthcare systems from across the state and two major centers from a nearby state shared information about the current state of the systems, the problems they were facing, and ways to solve them. Tracking was done on the number of patients and transfer data, and a confidential poll was used to find out how happy the clients were. There were a total of 5,307 requests from August 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022. Of those, 2,008 beds were found, 1,316 requests were dropped, and 1,981 requests could not be met. There were a total of 2,473 patients who did not have or were at low risk for COVID-19 (46.6%), while 1,715 patients who did have it (32.3%). The COVID-19 condition was unknown in 1,119 people, or 21.1%. In total, 760 patients were on ventilators, and 49.1% of them tested positive for COVID-19.
This was the busiest time for the Minnesota MOCC in the fall of 2020 when the governor told people to stay home. During the fall 2021 surge, however, only 30% of ICU patients and 39% of medical-surgical patients were put. A serious rise is shown by a high number of requests to the Critical Care Coordination Center, fewer places, longer placement times, and time series analysis that shows big differences between requests and acceptances. The start of a large-scale The Minnesota MOCC program did a good job of finding homes for patients during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave in the fall of 2020, and hospitals and health systems liked it. However, because of the growing demand and limited resources during the fall 2021 surge, a lot fewer ICU and medical-surgical patients were placed.
Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012369223052777