As COVID-19 hospitalizations decline, CT hospitals begin to shed excess beds

Photo | UConn Health/Janine Gelineau UConn Health's Farmington campus.

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By Matt Pilon

With COVID-19 hospitalizations down by more than 55% from their presumed peak a month ago, several Connecticut hospitals have begun to scale back excess beds they had added or converted ahead of the patient surge.

As of late April, hospitals across the state had grown their total licensed capacity by 2,774 beds, a 32% increase, according to the Office of Health Strategy.

UConn Health’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington this week notified OHS that it would be removing 36 beds on the seventh floor of its patient tower that had been added because of COVID-19. The floor will return to its former use as office space, the filing said. That would leave UConn Health with 616 licensed beds, still up significantly from a pre-pandemic total of 224, according to OHS.

Meanwhile, Yale New Haven Hospital last week told OHS it would remove 100 beds from the 350-bed field hospital it set up at the Lanman Center, return 18 beds to their former use at Shoreline Endoscopy Center in Guilford and add back some inpatient and ICU beds on its hospital campus. In all, Yale expected to have 1,971 total licensed beds last week, 1,721 of which are located on the health system’s campuses.

That’s still up from a pre-pandemic total of 1,407, but down from 2,139 in late April, according to OHS.

As of Wednesday, there were 887 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state, according to Gov. Ned Lamont’s office. That’s down from 1,972 on April 22.