INDIANAPOLIS — On Wednesday, Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced the state is asking hospitals to delay or postpone non-emergency or non-critical care procedures for three weeks in an effort to clear hospital beds for COVID-19 patients and relieve strain on health care workers.

“Living in pain every day is not fun,” said Nicole Emmert, 22. She’s battled pain recently because of chronic painful bladder syndrome.

“It’s affected a lot of my social life with me being in pain all the time,” Emmert said.

She had surgery in June to treat the condition and was supposed to have another in two weeks, but now she’ll have to wait until the new year.

Holcomb said elective surgeries set for between Dec. 16 and Jan. 3 would need to be rescheduled so there would be more doctors and nurses available for COVID-19 patients as cases continue to rise.

“I think it’s probably the right call. The surge has hit us all hard,” said Dr. Christopher Doehring, vice president of medical affairs at Franciscan Health.

Doehring said they had already been evaluating scheduled procedures on a day-to-day basis over the past few weeks.

“Some days we get by without any cancellations, but today we had to cancel six cases because they were very full,” he said.

That’s also been the case at Johnson Memorial Health, where the CEO thinks the decision to cancel procedures should be left up to hospitals, not the state.

“This is a very fluid situation. One day you’re full, then you get a bunch of discharges. The next day you’re not,” Dr. David Dunkle said. He said cancelling procedures not only impacts patients, but hospitals financially.

“We’re taking care of more uninsured and under-insured patients than we ever have before, so to then lose a big revenue stream and really not be in control of that ourselves, it’s tough,” Dunkle said. “I think it’s a little far-reaching for someone else to decide that for us, to be honest with you.”

“Far reaching” isn’t the word that comes to mind for Emmert when she thinks about her surgery being rescheduled. “Expensive” does, though. Surgery next year means meeting a whole new insurance deductible.

“I’m paying even more thousands of dollars next year for the surgery,” she said.

IU Health also sent this statement to 13News about the governor’s announcement:

“IU Health is committed to offering highly-skilled care to any patient who needs it. Hoosiers should rest assured our hospitals remain safe and open to care for our communities. Outpatient procedures and essential inpatient procedures will continue as scheduled. Our providers will reevaluate scheduled surgical cases within the guidelines of Governor Holcomb’s executive order. We encourage Hoosiers to help keep our communities safe and limit the spread of the virus by wearing masks, physical distancing, and washing your hands.”