Pandemic puts Northern California health care delivery to the ultimate test

THE NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

March 21, 2022

2 years later: COVID’s impact on the North Bay economy

Sonoma and Solano counties: Different COVID approaches but similar outcomes

Sonoma has been among the California counties with the most proactive public health measures in the past two years, while Solano County has resisted measures.

How has each industry been faring?

Beyond the human toll, the pandemic, public policy responses to it and consumer reactions have had impacts on employers that vary by industry. We talked to players in several sectors, and here’s what they told us.

Voices of local business

Here are the personal stories of how North Bay leaders have steered their organizations through the past two years. What has changed? What were their worst fears, and how did they face them?

COVID-19 has been pushing hospitals to the brink at times for the last two years, with no ICU beds available, not enough staff and dwindling supplies of personal protective equipment.

It’s meant getting government loans and seeing labor costs going up. The region’s hospitals worked to fill the labor gap by bringing in traveling nurses, an expensive but necessary proposition. But that well also went dry. As COVID-19 infection rates waned in California, those nurses traveled to other parts of the country where cases were spiking.

Elective surgeries and routine health care visits were postponed — sometimes at great cost. Delays in procedures in some instances had consequences, such as heart attacks or cancers. And when patients could return for care, many were skittish about re-entering a medical facility and possibly catching COVID-19.

But in early 2021, there was a growing sense of optimism as COVID-19 treatments started to become available.

“We were able to work together for testing, for vaccines, for coordinating treatments, and for offering help and encouragement to each other when we all took our turns in crisis,” recalled Dr. Amy Herold, chief medical officer, Providence Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa.

But for many health care workers, the trauma became too much. Some caught COVID-19, others took an extended leave of absence, and even more left the industry altogether.

The result not only escalated an already-difficult staffing shortage, it brought front and center the stark reality of a mental health crisis. Health care systems elicited help from their in-house mental health physicians, beefed up their employee assistance programs and offered an abundance of resources.

Now, as the pandemic wanes, changes that were made to the delivery of health care will remain. Telehealth and video appointments — in use to some degree before the pandemic — have proven widely effective for treating non-urgent illnesses. The method of care also helps in lowering costs and keeping patients and caregivers safer with fewer in-office visits.