Pediatric viral trends in Wisconsin – Dec. 20

Children’s Wisconsin, along with pediatric hospitals across the country, continues to see large numbers of children with viral infections. Below is hospital census information to help our community better understand how respiratory illnesses are impacting kids locally. As the only health system in Wisconsin dedicated to the health of kids, Children’s Wisconsin has the largest pediatric intensive care unit in the state.

This week’s takeaway

With capacity tight, Children’s has intentionally centralized patient flow. This means areas across the health system are working together to understand, anticipate and implement tactics for patient care needs and to coordinate availability and utilization of emergency department, acute care, intensive care and ancillary services. This centralized support is called Mission Control. While this new operational process is helping us through current capacity constraints, it will also continue to serve as the future care delivery model beyond this viral season.

We have started to see some decrease in overall volumes over the last few weeks. While this is good news, it does not change the processes we have established to manage capacity within the organization on an ongoing basis.

Rainer Gedeit, MD
Acting chief medical officer, Children’s Wisconsin
Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics (Critical Care), Medical College of Wisconsin

For more information and data on respiratory viruses in Wisconsin, please see the Wisconsin Department of Health Services weekly Respiratory Virus Surveillance Report.

For more information and data on respiratory viruses in the United States, please see the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS).

Any questions? Please contact your physician liaison.

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