WHILE the city’s various hospitals and healthcare facilities are less strained, the healthcare utilization rate in the city remains critical.
According to City Health Officer Dr. Rowena P. Galpo, the city is currently facing an overall healthcare utilization rate of 98.18 percent, or just below full capacity.
Earlier in October, the city saw healthcare utilization rates above 100 percent based on reports from the city’s various private and public hospitals.
While the figures are decreasing overall, certain hospitals in the city are still seeing extreme overloading.
Pines City Doctors Hospital reported the highest hospital critical care utilization rate of 400 percent followed by Notre Dame de Chartres hospital at 200 percent, Baguio Medical Center at 162 percent, Saint Louis University (SLU) Hospital of the Sacred Heart at 100 percent.
Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC) is the only major hospital in the city that remains below full capacity, with a 94 percent utilization rate.
In terms of bed usage, some 65.7 percent of the city’s 979 available beds are currently occupied, down from the 75.9 percent recorded in September.
The city’s central triage quarantine facility has reported the highest occupancy rate at 75 percent, followed by the Baguio Teachers Camp Roxas and Romulo halls at 68 percent; Baguio City Community Isolation Unit at 67 percent; Laurel Dorm 2 at 58.51 percent; Ferioni Apartments at 46.67 percent; and the Baguio Teachers Camp’s Magsaysay Hall at 10 percent.
Meanwhile, though the city currently has a sufficient amount of oxygen tanks to address demand, Antonette Anaban, chief of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO), said that the city’s supplies are being stretched by the increasing amount of patients both awaiting hospitalization and undergoing home quarantine that need a supply of oxygen.
The required demand for O2 is between 11,200 to 13,440 pounds or equivalent to an average of 246 units of 50-pound O2 tanks daily, only four units less than the city has available to spare for emergency use.
