Hospitals in Prince George’s County, Maryland, have been disproportionately slammed by the coronavirus pandemic and are scrambling to increase their capacity to deal with a spike in patients.
No other county in Maryland has seen as many deaths and positive coronavirus cases, and some hospitals in the county have had to send patients to other facilities because they are so overwhelmed.
One such hospital is Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly.
“We have had to do this to maintain our capacity, particularly in our ICU,” said Joseph Wright, interim chief executive of University of Maryland Capital Region Health. “We’re experiencing here a very high rate of critical care patients.”
Wright said his health system — which overseas three hospitals including the Cheverly location — has tested 754 patients with 235 testing positive.
That is a 30% rate of patients testing positive, which is much higher than what the county has seen overall, which is about 13%.
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“We’re running more than twice the conversion rate of tested patients who become positive,” Wright said.
Wright and several other hospital leaders in the county updated the Prince George’s County Council during a virtual meeting Tuesday, detailing plans to quickly add beds inside hospitals and install tents outside.
“We truly are all in this together to work toward a solution to guide and care for Prince Georgians,” said Paul Grenaldo, president of Doctors Community Hospital in Lanham.
Grenaldo said his hospital’s rate of patients testing positive has been around 40%, and he is working on plans to potentially add 300 more beds.
“What do you do when patients keep coming and you’re looking at what your current capacity is?” Grenaldo asked.
One thing Grenaldo is doing is adding 51 beds by the end of the week using a former nursing home that is located near the hospital.
“As we move through the crisis, we’re going to try to keep as many patients within the four walls of the hospital first and then expand out to other locations as the need calls for that,” Grenaldo said.
The dire situation in Prince George’s County has shed more light on how African Americans have been more severely impacted by the virus than other groups of people.
The county’s population is roughly 60% African American, as estimated by the county’s health department.
