The hospital’s intensive care unit was operating at 160% capacity that day. Jaimee Belsky discuss options for additional space in a hallway there on Sept. Now, tensions are so strained that Billings Clinic is printing signs for its hallways, asking that the staff members not be mistreated.īillings Clinic emergency department manager Brad Von Bergen and Dr. Not so long ago, the cheers of community support could be heard from the hospital parking lot. What’s different from the early scenes of the pandemic is the public’s response. Last week, the county had 2,329 active cases, more than the next two counties combined. The state announced 1,209 new cases on Friday, and Yellowstone County, home to Billings Clinic, is seeing the worst of it. But now Montana is a national hot spot for covid infections, recording the highest percentage increase in new cases over the past seven days. The situation has played out in hospitals around the nation since 2020. “I do feel a little hopeless,” said Christy Baxter, the hospital’s director of critical care. In the past week, 14 people have died of covid here, the state’s largest hospital. The hospital’s morgue cart arrived at the ICU - as it frequently has these days - then the room was sterilized, another patient took the man’s place, and the cycle began again.

He was dead, at age 24, by Sunday morning. Visitors generally aren’t permitted in these rooms, but the man’s mother comes most days to gaze through a glass window for the allowed 15 minutes. They have covid-19 - the vast majority unvaccinated against the virus, the hospital says. He is among other patients, room after room of them, with the same grim tubes inserted down their throats. The man has been a patient at Billings Clinic for nearly a month, most of that time in the hospital’s intensive care unit. The dark lesions are insignificant given his current state, but she continues just the same, gently, soothingly, appearing to whisper to him as she works. Lying on his stomach all those hours has produced sores on his face, and one nurse dabs at the wounds. The ventilator forcing air into him is most effective when he’s on his stomach, so he is in that position most hours of the day, sedated and paralyzed by drugs. Nurses fill the hospital room to turn a patient from his stomach to his back.

In an extensive consent agenda and debate, discussion revolved around long standing tradition of where Billings’ legal advertising has gone for many years, whether the business was located within city limits or whether businesses and individuals will follow the change.Ĭity of Billings staff had recommended that the City Council approve the agreement for legal advertising with Yellowstone County News for one year, with five, one-year options to renew by mutual agreement.ĭuring executive action and debate, Council member Brent Cromley made the motion to award the Billings Times as the legal advertising contract publication of record while Council member Mike Yakawich seconded the motion.BILLINGS, Mont. Billings- The City of Billings awarded Yellowstone County News in Monday night’s City Council meeting the legal advertising contract for the next contract period.

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