St. Tammany Health System cancels select elective in-patient surgeries due to increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations

COVINGTON, La. (WVUE) - The St. Tammany Parish Health System is rescheduling some elective in-patient surgeries due to an increase in COVID-19 related hospitalizations.

The system’s president and CEO sent an email to all doctors informing them.

The St. Tammany Health system is reporting 34 patients currently in COVID care at the moment, which is an increase of 14 patients from last week.

The hospital says outpatient procedures that do not require a hospital stay will proceed. They also added that they are only rescheduling specific inpatient procedures (not time-sensitive) at the discretion of a surgeon’s judgment.

Dr. Patrick Torcson, St. Tammany Health System Chief Medical Officer released the following statement regarding this below:

“Today, based on rising levels and the projected trajectory of COVID patients, our surgical, physician and administrative leaders jointly agreed we should adjust our accommodation of inpatient admissions for elective purposes to better enable our teams to address COVID patient volumes.”

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