It's become almost a new norm: Unprecedented high volumes of patients are keeping the University of Mississippi Medical Center hospitals at or near capacity, sometimes pushing demand for beds, staffing and other medical resources beyond what's available.

Administrators have a plan to manage the transfer of patients from other hospital emergency departments to UMMC's Emergency Department and the transfer of inpatients from other facilities to the Medical Center's 406 critical care and medical-surgical beds. When beds are full or expected to be full given scheduled admissions and transfers, a “capacity alert” will be declared.

Patients waiting for a bed are considered boarded, meaning they're being temporarily cared for in another hospital location rather than a regular patient room.

When a capacity alert is declared, an email message will be distributed to multiple departments, including providers, leadership and MedCom. Newly created Medical Control Officers, or MCOs, will lead the decision-making on transfers requested by another hospital's ED or inpatient physicians.

The Medical Center's ED physician on duty will act as an MCO, coordinating with MedCom requests for emergency transfers. An MCO appointed in collaboration between administrators and medical staff leadership will evaluate requests from other hospitals to place inpatients in the adult hospitals or ICUs.

“We want to accommodate all patients who need the level of care provided by this facility that might not be provided anywhere else,” said Trish McDaniel, the adult hospitals' chief operating officer. “When we're on capacity alert, we've either met or are fast approaching our ability to do that.”

Beginning when he was 27, life for the Rev. Earl Reyer was dictated by just how bad his acid reflux and spasms were that day.

Listening to the banter between Dr. Josie Bidwell and Dr. Lishia Lee as they each roll fondant icing into the shape of cats, you'd never guess that when they first started working together they didn't really like each other.

“We hated each other,” said Lee, an assistant professor in the traditional BSN program at the University of Mississippi Medical Center's School of Nursing.

“I thought she was mean, and she thought I had an attitude,” said Bidwell, who is also an assistant professor at the SON, as well as newly appointed director of the UNACARE clinic in Jackson. “We were both correct about that.”

“Yes, we were,” said Lee.

“Once we started working together, we realized we kind of liked that about each other,” said Bidwell.

Lee was the nurse educator on 4C at Batson Children's Hospital when Bidwell first started working there as a new nurse. They both still fill in as floor nurses on 4C as needed, along with their duties as SON faculty.

The collaboration taking place between Lee and Bidwell in the kitchen located on the second floor of the SON building had little to do with nursing, aside from the fact that the cake they're decorating is for fellow faculty member, Mary McNair, who defended her dissertation on the following day.

A number of interesting events is scheduled for the upcoming week at the Medical Center.