4 ms·

I also find those numbers interesting. I, with help from my clerk and my head nurse, called 50 hospitals trying to find available space for a sick patient that

I also find those numbers interesting. I, with help from my clerk and my head nurse, called 50 hospitals trying to find available space for a sick patient that required transfer from my small rural facility (we had been at 100% ICU capacity -- only 4 beds -- for weeks, and full more often than not for months). I called every major hospital in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Texas, with several in Nevada and Oklahoma as well. Every one of them reported they had no capacity to accept my patient for transfer. I looked at the AZ and UT state statistics within a few days and was surprised to see them reporting much more capacity than I had been notified about when trying to find a bed for my patient. A Reddit thread I started based in part on the experience: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/r6bl1u/not_accepting_transfers_from_out_of_state/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/r6bl1u/not_accept... Our local trauma centers have been so full that local ERs have literally had people die in the ER from treatable conditions (requiring a specialist we don't have) while trying to find a place that could accept a transfer. It has been like this for months. Our hospital had to establish a separate team just to help make phone calls because the physicians were spending hours upon hours of their shift making calls in search of open beds instead of patient care. I don't understand the discrepancy between my experience and numbers reported by the local state websites, but I think it might be premature to consider their reported data indisputable.

gremlinsinc 5y ago
Could it be..if you have 10 beds open, but through staff resignations etc..maybe only enough nurses for 8 beds? and that's where the discrepancies lay?
might9900 5y ago
I cover a 15 bed ICU in one of the states you mentioned and have seen the discrepancy as well. I noticed, starting in 2020, that our hospital's internal ICU bed-available data did not correlate with local press/internet data. I have access to internal, real-time, system-wide ICU bed-available data. (I'll say that we have some where between 10-25 hospitals, don't want to be specific as I don't know what management would think of posts like this on HN). Our internal system-wide data does not correlate very well with state-wide press/internet metrics either. When on-shift I spend much time trying to find beds for patients as well as fielding calls from other hospitals that are trying to do the same. The data available on the internet and in the press does not reflect the situation in the trenches at all in our region. I'm not sure how it could as our internal situation changes every 10-15 minutes, sometimes, depending on the progress or deterioration of individual patients, staffing availability, discharges home, numbers of people waiting to be cared for, what day of the week it is (Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon are the worst), how bad the roads are, what time of day it is (most people arrive in the afternoon and evening), if a holiday has just ended, if a large/local event has ended (people tolerate terrible symptoms for holidays and events and come to the ER afterwards). For the entire pandemic, the real-time in-hospital situation has been more dire than is reflected in the press or on data-accumulation sites like Johns Hopkins. It has been exhausting.

gremlinsinc 5y ago

Could it be..if you have 10 beds open, but through staff resignations etc..maybe only enough nurses for 8 beds? and that's where the discrepancies lay?

might9900 5y ago

I cover a 15 bed ICU in one of the states you mentioned and have seen the discrepancy as well. I noticed, starting in 2020, that our hospital's internal ICU bed-available data did not correlate with local press/internet data. I have access to internal, real-time, system-wide ICU bed-available data. (I'll say that we have some where between 10-25 hospitals, don't want to be specific as I don't know what management would think of posts like this on HN). Our internal system-wide data does not correlate very well with state-wide press/internet metrics either. When on-shift I spend much time trying to find beds for patients as well as fielding calls from other hospitals that are trying to do the same. The data available on the internet and in the press does not reflect the situation in the trenches at all in our region. I'm not sure how it could as our internal situation changes every 10-15 minutes, sometimes, depending on the progress or deterioration of individual patients, staffing availability, discharges home, numbers of people waiting to be cared for, what day of the week it is (Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon are the worst), how bad the roads are, what time of day it is (most people arrive in the afternoon and evening), if a holiday has just ended, if a large/local event has ended (people tolerate terrible symptoms for holidays and events and come to the ER afterwards). For the entire pandemic, the real-time in-hospital situation has been more dire than is reflected in the press or on data-accumulation sites like Johns Hopkins. It has been exhausting.