Patients who don’t get bathed each day or don’t get meals on time, because there’s not enough staff. Patients just out of surgery who need a nurse dedicated to watch only them, but instead have to share.
Patients in pain from a broken bone who wait hours for sedation because there are no ER beds, while ER patients wait for the ICU beds their lives may depend on.
These things are happening now. COVID-19 cases are swamping more Georgia hospitals, testing them in ways that were previously unimaginable. Hospitals say that they are not rationing the most important care — yet. But, caregivers are already making decisions about who gets which scarce resources. The only question is how grave those decisions will become, with projections showing that hospitalizations will continue to surge in the weeks ahead.
“We are treating patients in the hallways, in triage areas, in waiting rooms,” said Deborah Matthews, senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Tanner Health System in west Georgia. “Every day we huddle as a team and look at our options. We are having to do things we have never had to do before.”
Grady Memorial Hospital is full. Wellstar Atlanta Medical Center is full. The intensive care units or emergency departments of Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, Northside Atlanta Hospital, Emory University Hospital, Wellstar North Fulton Hospital, Wellstar Kennestone Hospital and others in the Atlanta metro area are full, as of data reported Wednesday afternoon. So were ERs in Covington, Chatsworth, Eatonton, Statesboro and other towns throughout Georgia at points on Wednesday, and ICUs in most parts of Georgia.
It’s not just COVID-19 patients who are affected. Hospitals are running out of beds, and, most crucially, staff, for all patients.
•••••
Hospital officials in northeast Georgia, where COVID-19 patients make up nearly 40% of all those hospitalized, issued a public statement begging people to wear masks and distance for the holidays, openly warning that with rising cases health care will have to be rationed.
•••••
Jansen said the hospital is planning to find “non-traditional” areas within its campus to add 50 to 100 patient beds.
“We just have to find the staff to serve those areas,” he said. ‘If you look across the region and the state you will find just about everybody is in the same position, which is really frightening.”
Some parts of the state, he said, could reach the point that hospitals in California have. There, some have had to resort to “crisis care” guidelines that allow for rationing care, according to the Associated Press.
•••••
Americans assume they will have access to high levels, almost perfection levels, of health care, Stanton said. “But the sobering reality is when people go to the hospital, this may no longer be the case.”
No comments:
Post a Comment