CRANBERRY TWP — The major concern with implementing a stay-at-home order is to “flatten the curve” and not overwhelm the commonwealth's health care facilities with coronavirus patients, Gov. Tom Wolf has said.

The most obvious way staying home will do this is by decreasing the likelihood of transmission. But UPMC officials say they've noticed a second manner in which staying home flattens the curve: namely fewer hospital admissions.

“With people staying at home and not being out doing their usual activities, we've definitely seen a decrease in accidents as well as traffic accidents,” said Susan Hoolahan, president of UPMC Passavant.

Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania's secretary of health, said in a news conference Monday that 70 percent of ventilators, 50 percent of hospital beds and 40 percent of intensive-care beds still are available to treat patients, including those with COVID-19.

While there is no immediate shortage of beds or supplies as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, UPMC is already preparing for a surge of patients. Hoolahan said there have been so few admissions that at UPMC Passavant-McCandless the hospital system closed some patient care units, thus increasing its intensive-care capacity.

A key part of the plan includes adding more negative pressure rooms, which allow air to flow into but not out of the room. The move helps prevent cross-contamination between coronavirus-infected patients and other areas of the hospital.

“We have a pretty extensive plan to be able to create additional negative pressure units as needed,” Hoolahan said. “We, along with our entire system, have the ability to increase our ICU capacity, as an example, sevenfold, and we have good plans in place to make sure that we have the equipment and the supplies to go along with that.”Those rooms already exist at both Passavant locations, including Cranberry Township, and the plan is to simply expand the number of those rooms.“We have a pretty extensive plan to be able to create additional negative pressure units as needed,” Hoolahan added.But this plan can only continue, she said, if Western Pennsylvanians continue to stay home unless absolutely necessary“One of the most important things that we want to make sure everybody understands is that to prevent spread, everybody needs to stay home,” Hoolahan stressed.

With patients reluctant to physically visit doctors' offices, UPMC has seen a significant increase in telemedicine visits.Much like how Butler Health System advanced its virtual medicine program, participation in UPMC telemedicine has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic.Dr. James Boyle, vice president of medical affairs for UPMC Passavant, said in a conference call with reporters Friday the hospital network conducted more virtual visits Wednesday and Thursday than in all of 2019.“That's just in two days,” he said. “Literally thousands of televisits are occurring across UPMC on a daily basis.”One of the biggest reasons for that, Boyle said, is because of worries about contracting the coronavirus during a visit outside the home. Because patients are hesitant to sit in a waiting room or visit a doctor's office, they're “much more interested and much more willing” to use telemedicine — and that's something that occurs in both primary care and specialties.Even urgent care visits are possible with telemedicine. In fact, Boyle said, there have been more frequent virtual urgent care visits than in-person appearances recently, contributing to the “explosion” in telehealth visits.

Boyle said another factor contributing to the rise of telehealth visits is the federal government's relaxation of some policies on virtual visits.For example, last month the federal government allowed Medicare patients to call or videoconference with doctors at no additional cost. While that has an immediate effect, Boyle said he expects it to continue after the pandemic.“There have been some changes at the federal level, liberalizing the use of devices to make it easier for patients and for providers,” he said. “I think this is just going to grow and grow and grow.”It benefits providers as well as patients. Personal protective equipment — something the network needs to “monitor and use judiciously,” he said — is not necessary during a televisit, freeing more supplies, staff and time for inpatient or other emergent visits.These are all acute changes and reactions to COVID-19, but Boyle said changing rules and attitudes toward telemedicine make it a more viable option patients will consider in the future.“Maybe one of the biggest things we see come out of this crisis is a change in the way medicine interacts with patients,” he added.