Sean McMinn, Audrey Carlsen
The federal government on Monday released detailed hospital-level data showing the toll COVID-19 is taking on health care facilities, including how many inpatient and ICU beds are available on a weekly basis.
Using an analysis from the University of Minnesota's COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, NPR has created a tool that allows you to see how your local hospital and your county overall are faring. (Jump to look-up tool.)
It focuses on one important metric — how many beds are filled with COVID-19 patients — and shows this for each hospital and on average for each county.
The ratio of COVID-19 hospitalizations to total beds gives a picture of how much strain a hospital is under. Though there's not a clear threshold, it's concerning when that rate rises above 10%, hospital capacity experts told NPR.
Anything above 20% represents "extreme stress" for the hospital, according to a framework developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
If that figure gets to near 50% or above, the stress on staff is immense. "It means the hospital is overloaded. It means other services in that hospital are being delayed. The hospital becomes a nightmare," IHME's Ali Mokdad told NPR.
The University of Minnesota's analysis shows that there are 55 counties where the hospital average has reached that rate.
Use the look-up tool below the map to find details about hospitals in your county.
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Can't see this visual? Click here.
Thomas Wilburn contributed to this report.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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