Media Contacts: 

Taylor Gage, 402-471-1970

Justin Pinkerman, 402-471-1967

Media Release:

Gov. Ricketts: State Rescinding DHM, Inpatient Elective Surgeries Can Resume

LINCOLN – Today, Governor Pete Ricketts announced that the State will rescind its Directed Health Measure (DHM) that had temporarily suspended inpatient Class D and Class E elective surgeries for all Acute Care, Critical Care, and Children’s Hospitals in Nebraska.  The DHM will be rescinded at 11:59 PM on October 21, 2021.  This will allow Class D and Class E elective surgeries to resume as of October 22, 2021.

Gov. Ricketts also announced that coronavirus hospitalizations in Nebraska have fallen below 10% of statewide hospital bed capacity (7-day rolling average).  In keeping with previously announced policy, updates to the Nebraska Hospital Capacity Dashboard—hosted at dhhs.ne.gov—will return to a weekly schedule as long as COVID-19 hospitalizations remain below the 10% capacity threshold.  Daily COVID-19 data will be reported for today (Thursday, October 21^st).  Then, the next update to the dashboard will occur on Wednesday, October 27^th.  The Nebraska Hospital Capacity Dashboard will subsequently be updated once per week on Wednesdays and will no longer include demographic data and county-specific statistics.