Hospital capacity
Seattle Children’s is beginning to experience some relief from the extremely high capacity constraints of recent months. We do, however, continue to see high winter volumes.
- Overall hospital census remains high, and the Emergency Department (ED) is still seeing extremely high patient volumes.
- The wave of patients experiencing mental and behavioral health crises is not slowing down.
- Seattle Children’s remains in active Code Yellow status, although at a lower level of response; we continue to monitor the situation and enact solutions to address the challenges we are facing.
Other important updates from Seattle Children’s
- Synagis season has ended: Due to exponential declines in RSV rates and related admissions, Seattle Children’s is no longer administering Synagis prophylaxis as of Tuesday, February 28. For more information, please consult state-specific recommendations for patients outside of our local area and review WA state and other data from the CDC.
- We have a scheduling backlog; please encourage families to proactively call us to schedule. We are hiring additional scheduling staff to keep pace with high demand but our pace of calling out to families to schedule is slower than we’d like. In some cases, patients may get an appointment several weeks sooner if they proactively call us to schedule instead of waiting for one of our schedulers to call them.
- GI has high referral volumes and long wait times; please manage constipation in primary care whenever possible.
- Non-urgent general GI referrals without red flags, including constipation, are currently scheduling 3 to 5 months out.
- GI has approximately 3,000 referrals in their scheduling queue with limited slots immediately available.
- GI is still accepting constipation referrals but encourages PCPs to see these patients in primary care whenever possible to ensure timely care. This will also help Seattle Children’s maintain good access for patients who most need specialty care.
- Our GI Refer a Patient webpage offers many PCP resources including:
- Functional Constipation Clinical Protocol (PDF), developed by Seattle Children’s specialists in collaboration with community providers, can help you determine whether your patient should be referred to a specialist or treated in primary care.
- Algorithm for Functional Constipation (p. 12 in document above)
- Guideline for families, including education materials to help understand and manage their child’s constipation
