Federal Government, States Race To Create More Hospital Beds Out Of Thin Air As Death Rate Continues To Climb
Field hospitals are being set up in parks, stadiums, hotels and even the tennis center where the U.S. Open is held as government leaders face grim projections about an expected surge of patients. Meanwhile, health care workers talk about what it's like inside the hospitals that are being slammed by the outbreak.
Reuters:
U.S. Death Toll Spirals Amid Rush To Build Field Hospitals, Find Supplies
The U.S. government raced on Tuesday to build hundreds of makeshift hospitals near major cities as healthcare systems were pushed to capacity, and sometimes beyond, by the coronavirus pandemic. Even as millions of Americans hunkered down in their homes under strict “stay-at-home” orders, the death toll, as tallied by Reuters, shot up by more than 850 on Tuesday, by far the most for a single day. (Brown and Whitcomb, 3/31)
Detroit Free Press:
University Of Michigan Looks To Indoor Track To Expand Coronavirus Capacity
The University of Michigan announced Tuesday it plans to convert its indoor track into hospital space, redeploy staff, and convert other areas within its health system, including dormitories, to handle a surge of coronavirus patients as demand for hospital beds grows. Michigan Medicine, the Ann Arbor-based hospital system, is licensed for 1,000 beds, but its projections for the rising number of coronavirus patients suggest that number won't be enough. (Shamus, Jesse and Gray, 3/31)
Politico:
Home Of The U.S. Open To Be Converted To A Field Hospital
The tennis complex that hosts the U.S. Open will by next week become a field hospital to treat coronavirus patients — part of a race to build more beds and relieve New York City's health care facilities, where a top official said all indicators are “flashing red.” The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens will host a 350-bed hospital, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a visit to the site Tuesday — and unlike other emergency hospitals opened in the city so far, it will be able to treat patients suffering from Covid-19. (Durkin, 3/31)
The Wall Street Journal:
Foundation Offers To Buy Los Angeles Hospital, Reopen It For Coronavirus Treatment
A foundation run by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times is looking to buy the closed St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles out of bankruptcy for $135 million and reopen it to treat coronavirus patients. The Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, a nonprofit founded about a decade ago by Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele B. Chan, has agreed to serve as the lead bidder to acquire St. Vincent from the hospital’s bankrupt owner, Verity Health System of California Inc., according to court papers. (Al-Muslim, 3/31)
Modern Healthcare:
Pennsylvania Gives $8 Million To Keep For-Profit Hospital Open Through April
Pennsylvania is coming to the rescue of a roughly 200-bed hospital whose private equity-owned operator announced plans to shutter the facility amid the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.Gov. Tom Wolf's office has agreed to hand over $8 million in emergency funding to Easton Hospital in Easton, roughly 70 miles north of Philadelphia. The hospital's operator, Steward Health Care, has in exchange agreed to keep the hospital open until the end of April. Steward is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which has more than $42 billion in assets under management. (Bannow, 3/31)
Politico:
‘Everybody’s In The Same Boat’: Coronavirus Drives New York’s Hospitals To Breaking Point
The coronavirus careening through New York City has brought one of the world’s premier medical capitals to its knees. The city’s cash-strapped public hospitals were predictably overwhelmed by the breadth of the virus: Despite relocating certain patients and rearranging wards to open up space for the influx, the system was consumed by the crisis. So too was New York City’s network of private hospitals, most of which operate on much more comfortable margins and have boards that count New York’s civic elite as members. (Goldenberg, Eisenberg and Muoio, 3/31)
The Wall Street Journal:
What The Nurses See: Bronx Hospital Reels As Coronavirus Swamps New York
In hospitals across New York City and elsewhere in the country, nurses and doctors are complaining about a lack of safety equipment, insufficient staffing, murky policies and other challenges. New York City accounts for the largest number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. On Tuesday morning, the city reported 40,900 cases and 932 deaths. In the last few weeks, the 57-year-old Ms. Norstein and other nurses say they have seen freezer trucks out back for dead bodies; four to five patients dying every emergency-room shift; the loudspeaker frequently booming out “codes” for patients whose hearts or breathing stopped. Colleagues who were healthy one day fell critically ill the next. (Ramachandran and Safdar, 3/31)
ABC News:
Baby Monitors In The ICU: Nurses Get Creative To Save Lives, Critical Equipment
An influx of coronavirus patients has overwhelmed the American health care infrastructure, leaving front-line medical providers to improvise creative solutions to the day-to-day pitfalls of treating those afflicted with the highly contagious disease. The latest innovative solution found in hard-hit hospitals? Baby monitors. (Bruggeman, 4/1)
Los Angeles Times:
Bay Area Hospital Desperately Needs Coronavirus Supplies
An elected official in the San Francisco Bay Area pleaded for help Tuesday, appalled by the shortage of personal protective equipment at a hospital leased by the state of California to care for coronavirus patients. “Here’s what I see: I see a disaster on the brink of happening,” San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa said at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, of the shortage of personal protective equipment, a category that includes masks, gowns and gloves, at Seton Medical Center in Daly City. (Lin, 3/31)
ProPublica:
Hospitals Have Left Many COVID-19 Patients Who Don’t Speak English Alone, Confused And Without Proper Care
When a woman who didn’t speak English arrived at the overrun emergency room of a Brooklyn hospital last week, she was initially placed in a unit for patients who didn’t have the coronavirus. But on Thursday, a doctor realized she had a cough and fever and should be treated for COVID-19. The doctor brought her over to the coronavirus unit with a warning: “Good luck. She speaks Hungarian.” She died the following night. (Kaplan, 3/31)
CIDRAP:
What Can Hospitals Still Do To Prep For COVID-19?
Doctors in hospitals in coronavirus epicenters such as New York City are reporting "apocalyptic" scenes of death, disease, and lack of equipment to protect healthcare workers from infection. But less-affected hospitals anticipating local outbreaks should be thinking creatively and acting urgently to care for COVID-19 patients before, during, and after the pandemic, hospital preparedness experts say. (Van Beusekom, 3/31)
NBC News:
'We Answered The Call': Custodial And Sanitation Workers Demand Support Amid Outbreak
When Fasika Getahun, 48, finishes her shift as a custodian at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle each day, she goes home exhausted but excited to see her seven kids. She's a single mom who immigrated from East Africa, and it's gratifying to come home to see them healthy and happy. But since the coronavirus outbreak has pummeled Washington and her adopted city, the anxiety of working on the front lines in a hospital — where she thoroughly disinfects bathrooms and infected patient areas without personal protective equipment — has begun to wear on her. Returning home now doesn't bring the same comfort it once did. (McCausland, 3/31)
