Joliet Hospital Getting Overwhelmed With Nursing Home Patients

Here we go again. St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet is getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients from one facility. This time it’s from Symphony of Joliet. The nursing home has over 80 cases of coronavirus and WJOL is being told that St. Joe’s is receiving the lion share of all their patients. It was in late March that ER Doctor John Walsh alerted WJOL and the media to a humanitarian disaster at the hospital, calling it a “war zone” due to all the COVID-19 patients being sent there from Stateville Correctional Center. A similar situation is unfolding now, only this time it’s a nursing home.

Yet in region 7 which encompasses 13 hospitals in the southwest suburbs including St. Joe’s, the percentage of ventilators occupied stands at 40 percent. There are 164 ventilators available between such hospitals as Silver Cross Hospital, Morris Hospital, La Grange and more. The Illinois Department of Public Health website, lists all regions and the number of ICU beds available. In Region 7 there are 122 ICU beds available out of 492.

Thanks to changes at the prison with the Illinois National Guard on site to segregate COVID-positive inmates from the rest of the population and load-sharing patients to other hospitals in Region 7, easing the burden on St. Joe’s hospital.

To see the list of hospital ICU and ventilator capacity click here.