Billings Clinic

COVID-19 hospitalizations in Montana hit an all-time high Wednesday, with 510 people needing hospital care due to the coronavirus. Public health and medical experts say the delta variant has made people sicker, and more COVID patients have landed in intensive care units.

As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations decline across the country, the pandemic in Montana has continued to get worse. The average number of hospitalizations grew by nearly 40% over the past month. Health care workers are trying to keep up, and some are pushing the state to do more to help.

Gov. Greg Gianforte is sending 70 National Guard troops to hospitals around the state to help health care workers overloaded by COVID patients.

Billings Clinic in Montana is past the tipping point as it looks for places to add intensive care unit beds and is on the cusp of rationing care to deal with the surge of sick covid patients in a state with significant anti-vaccination sentiment.

Dr. Shelly Harkins, the president and chief medical officer of Helena’s Saint Peter’s Health made this sobering announcement Thursday morning: “For the first time in my career we are at the point where not every patient in need will get the care we might wish we could give.”

As COVID-19 cases surge, hospitals say they can’t get enough staff to keep up. Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration says it’s collaborating with hospitals as needs arise.

New COVID-19 cases and related hospitalizations in Billings are putting so much strain on the local health care system that one hospital may start rationing care as early as this week.

For years, health care workers and people who’ve had to travel for family members’ mental health hospitalizations have been pushing Bozeman’s major hospital system, the nonprofit Bozeman Health, to add a behavioral health unit at its Deaconess Hospital. On Sept. 30, the system’s board plans to consider whether to add one as part of an expansion of its mental health services.

Montana’s largest hospital is asking Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office to deploy the National Guard to assist doctors and nurses who are stretched thin by the growing surge in COVID-19 cases. This is the second request for assistance in the last month.

A new Montana law that prohibits employers from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations has hospital leaders worried, as concerns over hospital staffing and the spread of the delta variant grows.