Bill Bigfoot said:
Looks like the problem is the 64% of the beds are used by non COVID patients...Need to get those numbers down. What is causing that spike in Non-Covid use?
Just your normal every day illnesses. Heart attacks, sepsis, non-Covid pneumonia, renal failure, etc. This is also combined with people who have been delaying care for the last month or two. ICUs stay at a certain capacity regardless of epidemics.
I personally had two different patients within the last week who ran out of diabetes meds in March or April and are coming in with sugars on the 600s. Absolutely unacceptable from a personal standpoint that they didn't fill their meds or reach out to a Teledoc to get a refill, but that's how a lot of people live. Also seeing a ton of people coming in for uncontrolled hypertension when they ran out of blood pressure meds. Again, why they didn't just reach out for a refill while they were at home is beyond me, although many of those people are lower income folks who lost their jobs and often, even while employed, have trouble paying for their medications.
I've also seen many people skipping rounds of dialysis out of fear of going to the clinic. That's some thing that can be really bad and end up in an extended hospital stay.