BISMARCK — The biggest health care provider in North Dakota's capital city still has hospital beds available for COVID-19 patients even as infections in the region mount, a company executive says.
Sanford Health Vice President of Clinics Todd Schaffer said 20 of the 26 beds in the company's Bismarck COVID-19 wing are being used, though he added that the hospital could increase capacity if needed.
Despite the open beds, several patients in the hospital will soon be on the move.
Sanford plans to transfer some patients next week from the hospital to a new COVID-19 unit at Sunset Drive Prospera Community in Mandan. The nursing home, which operates jointly with Sanford, will open the eight-bed unit to care for patients who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 but are unlikely to still be contagious.
Schaffer said the patients who will be transferred to the nursing home's unit still need a level of care or therapy they couldn't get at home, but don't require a ventilator or other forms of acute care. He added that the patients may have been on ventilators in the past and the strain COVID-19 put on their bodies has made them weak.
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Wade Peterson, the executive director of Sanford-Good Samaritan Community Health Services, said the nursing home's COVID-19 unit will be segregated from the rest of the facility's residents and caregivers will only care for patients in the wing. Employees will also wear "advanced personal protection equipment" like N-95 masks in the unit, Peterson said. Residents of the nursing home who test positive for the illness will also be transferred to the unit.
Peterson added that opening the unit will not set back the nursing home's aspirations to reopen the facility for family visitation when COVID-19 conditions subside in Morton County.
The Bismarck-Mandan metropolitan area has become North Dakota's COVID-19 hotspot with a third of the state's active cases coming in Burleigh and Morton counties.
