BayCare Health To Pause Elective Procedures Due To COVID-19 Spike

TAMPA, FL — With coronavirus rates surging in Tampa Bay and hospital beds quickly filling, BayCare Health System is the first hospital to announce that it will curtail elective procedures.

BayCare announced Wednesday that it is pausing some elective procedures in its hospitals in Hillsborough and Polk counties due to a rising number of coronavirus patients.

For now, the change will only impact elective procedures that require an overnight stay in an inpatient bed.

The hospitals impacted are St. Joseph’s, St. Joseph’s Children’s and St. Joseph’s Women’s in Tampa; St. Joseph’s North in Lutz; St. Joseph’s South in Riverview; South Florida Baptist in Plant City; Bartow Regional Medical Center; Winter Haven and Winter Haven Women’s.

St. Joseph’s, Winter Haven and Winter Haven Women’s paused elective procedures Thursday. The other facilities in Hillsborough and Polk counties will pause on Monday.

BayCare hospitals in Pinellas and Pasco counties are not impacted.

“Our priority is always patient safety and being sure we are available to serve our communities’ acute health needs,” said Glenn Waters, BayCare’s chief operating officer. “This move helps us to continue to have capacity to serve those needs.”

In Florida, 66 of 67 counties are listed as having "high" levels of community transmission.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a county to have "high" transmission if there have been 100 or more cases of the coronavirus per 100,000 residents or a test positivity rate of 10 percent or higher in the past seven days.

According to the CDC's data tracker, five Florida counties — Duval, Hillsborough, Orange, Miami-Dade and Broward — have had 5,000 or more new cases in the last seven days.

The statewide average is 49 new cases per 100,000 people each day, more than three times the average rate in the United States of about 16 new cases per 100,000 people each day.

The change in Hillsborough and Polk counties applies to procedures that require an overnight stay in an inpatient bed and can be delayed without danger to the patient.

BayCare will determine at a later date when to start rescheduling appointments.

BayCare hospital and surgery centers began notifying providers of the change late Wednesday.

The health care system has a clinical review process to consider requests by patients or doctors who receive a cancellation notice but believe the procedure is medically necessary and should proceed.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, BayCare has been adapting its operations to serve the community, including shifting resources and assets to respond to the spread of the virus – while also making sure facilities are available to serve other health care needs.

BayCare facilities, like elsewhere in the state, have seen a significant increase in COVID-19 patients in the past month as the delta variant has taken hold in the state.

In the past three weeks, COVID patients in BayCare hospitals have increased more than three-fold.

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• FL Hospitalizations Surge As COVID-19 Delta Variant Spreads