UnityPoint Health is temporarily suspending elective procedures as COVID inpatients tax hospital capacity to its limits.
All elective procedures are suspended at UnityPoint's three central Illinois hospitals effective today. Hospital leadership will reassess the suspension on a weekly basis.
Impacted patients will be contacted by their surgical providers.
At OSF HealthCare, leadership is stopping short of ordering a full suspension of elective procedures for the time being, but surgeons are reviewing patients on a case-by-case basis to determine which procedures might be postponed using guidance from the American College of Surgeons.
Last week, Gov. JB Pritzker asked hospitals to consider suspending elective procedures as an influx of COVID-19 hospitalizations sweeps across the state.
Health officials continue to urge people to get vaccinated and boosted, to wear a mask, wash their hands and to keep their distance from others in public settings.
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