Nebraska hospital leaders on Monday shared their stories of overcrowding due to the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases.
President of the Nebraska Hospital Association Jeremy Nordquist says COVID-19 cases could double in the next 2 to 3 weeks and hospitals will face even more challenges. Now they are dealing with staff shortages, compassion fatigue, ill hospital staff and long lines of people waiting to be seen.
Ivan Mitchell is the CEO of great Plains Health in North Platte and says about 1/4th of all their patients have the virus. Transferring sick patients now is very difficult. Mitchell says, “I’ll be in contact with surrounding CEO’s and it will take them hours sometimes to transfer a patient who is really needs to go to a higher level of care. They not only called us but larger hospitals in the state and outside the state and they have struggled with placement.”
Josie Abboud is president and CEO at Methodist and Methodist Women’s Hospital and agrees that transfers are difficult. She says it all depends on the moment and the time of day if they can accept sick patients. Another issue at Methodist and statewide is compassion fatigue, meaning hospital staff are tired and burned out. They have more than 900 open positions and they are anxious to take applications.
Todd Consbruck is president and CEO at Avera St. Anthony’s in O’Neill and says they too are seeing compassion fatigue. He says, “Nebraskans as a whole are a a caring and compassionate group but we are seeing signals of society who are not giving health care workers the respect and kindness they deserve. That is probably one of the most frustrating things to witness in our hallways, entrances, and patient rooms is the lack of respect for doctors, nurses, and lab personal and everyone trying to do their best to care for people.”
The general message is a hospitals is supply of health care workers and beds is being outstripped by the demand for care.
Nordquist says they are working with the state to to help with decompression. He says, “We are working with the state to see some positive movement and maybe open up skilled nursing home beds in the near future to help move some patients out. It doesn’t help with intensive care capacity but it would reduce staffing pressures at hospitals.”
Nordquist says as the legislature is in session and as the Governor will be promoting his ‘State of the State’ and his budget proposal later this week, it is also important for our policymakers remember we are going through a health care crisis and it will take time to rebuild. He encourages lawmakers to make investments, strengthening and grow our health care workforce for tomorrow in case we see something like this happen again.
All those who spoke at today’s news conference stress the importance of vaccines.