Houston hospitals are increasingly alienating new patients as the coronavirus overwhelms emergency rooms

Houston, TX-Houston’s hospital is scrambling to open additional intensive care beds to accommodate the wave of critically ill patients, thus treating hundreds of COVID-19 patients in the emergency room Is forced to. According to the company number shared with NBC News and Pro Publica, the door.

At the same time, the 12 busiest hospitals in the region are increasingly reporting to emergency responders that they can’t safely accept new patients almost three times more than a year ago, the reporter said. According to the data.

The increase in ambulance detours, coupled with the surge of patients indefinitely housed in emergency rooms, is the latest indication that Houston hospitals are nervous to keep up with the surge of new coronavirus patients. ProPublica and NBC News used to be run by a public hospital in Houston Insufficient medication to treat COVID-19 patients, resulting in a surge in home deaths It suggests that the death toll from coronavirus from cardiac arrest may be higher than official statistics indicate.

On Thursday, 3,812 were hospitalized at COVID-19 The area includes more than 1,000 intensive care units and is the record since the beginning of the pandemic. At the same time, hospitals are still seeing a steady stream of patients in need of care as a result of car crashes, violent crimes, and fever, as Texas authorities have not issued another home order to delay the spread of the virus. -Related medical emergencies.

Houston officials have warned that it could be a reenactment of what happened in New York City in March and April. Stop the tide.

Usually, when people arrive at a hospital emergency department, they are evaluated and treated by medical staff. Sick or injured enough to require hospitalization will be moved to other areas of the hospital for professional care. But more and more in Houston, especially for patients suffering from COVID-19, there is nowhere to go.

“Usually the patient just goes to the ICU’s bed, but because there are no beds available, he continues to board in the emergency room,” said Esmaeil Porsa, President and CEO of Harris Health Systems. .. “It’s not the optimal level of care. This is not what we choose to do. The only reason this is happening is that we are forced to do it.”

Hospital leaders say they are working to provide quality care to patients in emergency rooms, some of whom have specialized medical staff and equipment available to provide treatment there. Bring it to the receiving patient. Research conducted before the coronavirus epidemic Patients stay in the ER The worse the result..

Although ICU and other hospital units are staffed by doctors, nurses, and other support personnel who have been specifically trained and experienced in the care of critically ill patients in need of specific medical interventions, medical care in the emergency department The practitioner’s mission is to quickly assess, stabilize, and move patients to the required location.

“The problem is we can’t take them where they need to be. Now we are in a position that ER documents need to act like hospitalists and intensive care physicians, which is our role. No, it should be there.” Dr. Cedric Dirk, an emergency doctor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said. “The downside of getting patients into the emergency department, regardless of the situation, is that they start care late for those in need of hospitalization, and the start of care for any medical condition is the most important period.”

The same scenario is deployed at a hospital in the Houston area.

A daily status report produced on Wednesday by the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Board coordinating the emergency care response in the Houston area includes ready-to-use non-surgical, including the city’s top trauma centers, Ben Taub Hospital and Hospital. Flagship hospital at Memorial Herman at Texas Medical Center showed several hospitals lacking ICU beds.

As of Wednesday afternoon, approximately 145 patients were admitted to the emergency department of the entire Memorial Hermann Health System, according to an internal number provided individually by Dr. Memorial Hermann and confirmed by hospital executives. Several other Houston area hospitals report having multiple patients in the ER.

Dr Jamie McCarthy, executive vice president and emergency room doctor at Memorial Hermann Health Systems, acknowledged that the coronavirus crisis forced the team to admit more patients to the ER.

“All hospitals are full,” McCarthy said. “Every hospital in the city accepts patients. We are expanding our capacity, but we can’t turn it on immediately. We need personnel. We need hospitalization for nurses and doctors. , Inpatient capabilities, we are just catching up with the incoming volume.”

While it is not uncommon for a small number of patients to be placed in the ER on busy days, especially during the flu season, three Houston ER doctors say that a very large number of patients are in the emergency department or such long-term, long-term. He said that he had never seen him receive extended care.

Treating patients for more than a few hours at the ER is “not ideal,” McCarthy said, Memorial Herman will send an intensive care physician and other specialists to the emergency department to ensure that the patient receives quality treatment I tried to reduce the impact on the patient by

However, he warned that there is a limit to what Houston hospitals can do to respond to the crisis.

“We’re adding capacity, but it’s been fully expanded right now, and if that continues, we’ll run out of rooms. It will look like New York,” McCarthy said. Stay and avoid crowds to slow the spread of the virus.

HCA Healthcare, Houston’s largest hospital system, has also treated dozens of COVID-19 patients in the emergency department. In a statement, HCA spokesperson Debra Burbridge said hospital officials have taken steps to mitigate the impact on the patient, and usually dispatch staff to perform or support selective surgery-Governor’s Suspended by order-at COVID-19 to treat the patient.

Dr Kusum Mathews, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Ikern School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York, said hospitals should take steps to mitigate the risk of overcrowded ER, including those described by Memorial Harman and HCA. Said the authorities could.

Matthews said the treatment of patients infected with the virus “exceeded all aspects of imagination.” “We had to put a bed in the hallway and double the room… just to get the emergency department down to accommodate more patients.”

Houston’s top hospital executives have repeatedly said that they can add hundreds of new intensive care beds to meet demand for at least the next few weeks, but the number of patients treated in the emergency room Those involved in the fast-growing crisis have shown the difficulty of carrying out those plans in a straight line.

“These are different from switch-key type activities,” said Porsa, CEO of Harris Health System, who said the hospital had to go to a hospital in the suburbs of Houston to vacate the patient. “The bottleneck for that is really staffing. As you can imagine, ICU nurses are not a dozen units. It’s very hard to get and it takes time to actually do it.”

The confusion of patients being treated with ER has led to delays in emergency response time throughout the city, according to Houston Fire Department officials.

If the hospital becomes overloaded, ask the local authorities to divert the ambulance to another location. For example, Memorial Hermann’s Northeast Hospital was diverted for just two percent of its time in the last eight days of late June and early July. At the same time this year, 58% were circumvented. The number of Ben Taub, Houston’s busiest public hospital, surged from 58% to 81%.

According to Matt White, Chief of Staff at the Houston Fire Department, the problem is that when all hospitals are full, the paramedics take patients to a very busy emergency department and cannot receive them immediately. And by law, hospitals need to screen and stabilize arriving patients.

“When everyone is distractions,” White said.

Previous coronavirus outbreaks have flooded New York City and Detroit emergency rooms, but blockade orders in these cities have reduced vehicle accidents, reduced violent crime, and increased space within the ER. Has been released for COVID patients.

As most Texas companies are still open and home orders are not required, Houston and other COVID-19 hotspot hospitals are addressing the steady stream of patients seeking other medical care. However, they are facing the additional challenge of creating room for COVID patients. Emergency.

And, nationwide, people with chronic health problems that have delayed seeking care early in a pandemic have begun to appear and begin to take beds for treatment, said the Los Angeles Fire Department medical director. Dr. Mark Xstein, professor of emergency medicine, said Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Despite these challenges, McCarthy, an executive at Memorial Herman, said it was imperative that people keep going to the hospital in case of an emergency. He pointed out the NBC News and ProPublica reports this week. According to the report, many people died suddenly at home before the emergency responders arrived.

“Even if we believe patients have serious medical problems, they still need to come to the emergency department,” McCarthy said. “We create the ability to take care of them. Delaying the care of a time sensitive emergency is a time we cannot get back. Asking for help when they have a heart attack. If you wait, they’re worse than they are. Come early.”

The video posted is from the previous story.

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