In a sign of the stress now facing Chicago-area health systems, 22 of NorthShore University HealthSystem’s immediate care centers closed early Thursday to additional patients, following influxes of people seeking care.

       Twenty-two of the system’s immediate care centers stopped taking new patients well before closing time Thursday afternoon “due to high patient volume,” according to NorthShore’s website. As of about 2 p.m., signs affixed to the doors of immediate care locations announced that no more patients would be seen that day, and no more COVID-19 tests given.

       The sites reached capacity early, meaning all the scheduled slots were filled, said spokeswoman Carolyn Starks. When a person checks into a NorthShore urgent care site, that person is given a slot. The centers continued to see patients who already had scheduled slots earlier in the day, but stopped accepting more patients early. The centers were expected to reopen for their normal hours Friday.

       Starks said similar situations happened in August and a few other times in the last two weeks. She suggested people check NorthShore’s website to see if centers are open before heading to them.

       The early closures came amid spiking demand for COVID-19 tests because of a surge of the illness in Illinois and the approaching Christmas holiday. Many people are trying to get COVID-19 tests ahead of travel and family gatherings.

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       Normally, part of the purpose of urgent care centers is to help people with medical needs avoid going to emergency rooms. If urgent care centers are unavailable and people have medical problems, they should call their doctors for advice, said Dr. Ernest Wang, NorthShore’s chief of emergency medicine.

       “If they can’t get a hold of them and they feel like they need to be seen, we will see you,” Wang said. “We will do our best to see you in a timely fashion.”

       But the emergency departments at NorthShore’s hospitals, and many other hospitals in the Chicago area, are already stretched.

       “We’ll take anybody who comes but we’re going to triage you in the order of illness and do our best to take care of everyone who comes, but it’s busy, so you’ll have to expect some extended wait times,” Wang said.

       Emergency department waits were running a couple of hours on Thursday, but Wang said he expects they may get worse a week after Christmas. After Thanksgiving, wait times sometimes reached nine hours, he said.

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       NorthShore’s hospitals are generally full of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients, meaning it can sometimes be difficult to find hospital beds for people who come to the ER and need to be admitted. Earlier this week, NorthShore’s ERs in Skokie, Glenview, Highland Park and Evanston had 40 people waiting for beds in other parts of the hospitals, Wang said.

       In an effort to keep more beds open, NorthShore had to start delaying some elective surgeries this past week, Wang said.

       Many Chicago-area hospitals are under strain now because of staffing shortages and large numbers of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients. A recent Tribune analysis found that Illinois hospitals are being flooded with patients more than at any other time of the pandemic, with fewer beds open than during the deadliest COVID-19 surge a year earlier.

       lschencker@chicagotribune.com

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