Colorado hospital transfer center deactivates as COVID retreats

The transfer center that helped move patients to Colorado hospitals with space to care for them during the worst points of the pandemic deactivated Tuesday.

Over the course of the pandemic, the center arranged transfers for more than 45,000 patients, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.

The center was first activated in November 2020, then shut down in February 2021. The hospital association reactivated it in August, as the delta wave started to strain hospital capacity, then moved to the highest level in November. At the highest level, patients could be transferred to any hospital in the state that had the ability to care for them, while lower levels focused on transfers within regions or between hospitals in the same system.

Hospitalizations for confirmed COVID-19 peaked at 1,676 in mid-January and have fallen steadily, to a low of 321 on Tuesday. The hospital association announced the highest level was no longer needed in early February.

Transfers between hospitals when a patient needs more complex care aren’t unusual, and under normal circumstances, two facilities arrange them easily. During the surges, however, so many patients needed to move that it was more practical to have a team responsible for keeping track of where beds were available at any given moment.

Dr. Darlene Tad-y, vice president of clinical affairs at the hospital association, said the transfer center became a national model for handling patients when capacity was tight.

“We are incredibly grateful to the hospitals and health systems for their partnership, to the state for its support for this effort, and to Coloradans for trusting our hospitals to make these sometimes-difficult decisions in order to ensure our health system bent but didn’t break,” she said in a news release.

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