Joel Valdez was shot three times in his left shoulder and needs surgery, but the hospital is so overwhelmed by COVID-19 that he’s still waiting. “Everybody is really surprised I’m still in this bed a week later,” As of Monday morning the intensive care unit was at 103 percent capacity, with 33 percent of the beds filled with COVID-19 patients, leaving inadequate staffing levels to complete his surgery. Spokesperson Amanda Callaway stated, “Due to strained resources, surgical patients are being prioritized based on several factors, which unfortunately may result in a delay of non-emergent surgical procedures,” she added.
With the highly contagious Delta variant spreading across the United States and millions of people still not vaccinated, hospitals in Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and other states are reporting bed shortages. The surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has also caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hot spots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients. Hospitals are losing workers to burnout and lucrative out-of-state temporary gigs.
Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oregon all have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic, and nursing staffs are badly strained. In Florida, virus cases have filled so many hospital beds that ambulance services and fire departments are straining to respond to emergencies. Some patients wait inside ambulances for up to an hour before hospitals in St. Petersburg, Florida, can admit them which is a process that usually takes about 15 minutes, Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton said.
One person who suffered a heart attack was bounced from six hospitals before finding an emergency room in New Orleans that could take him in, said Joe Kanter, Louisiana’s chief public health officer. “It’s a real dire situation,” Kanter said. “There’s just not enough qualified staff in the state right now to care for all these patients.”
Miami’s Jackson Memorial Health System, Florida’s largest medical provider, has been losing nurses to staffing agencies, other hospitals and pandemic burnout, Executive Vice President Julie Staub said. The hospital’s CEO says nurses are being lured away to jobs in other states at double and triple the salary.
Staub said system hospitals have started paying retention bonuses to nurses who agree to stay for a set period. To cover shortages, nurses who agree to work extra are getting the typical time-and-a-half for overtime plus $500 per additional 12-hour shift. Despite those offerings, the hospital sometimes still has to turn to agencies to fill openings. “You are seeing folks chase the dollars,” Staub said. “If they have the flexibility to pick up and go somewhere else and live for a week, months, whatever and make more money, it is a very enticing thing to do. I think every health care system is facing that.”
Close to 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages in the next week, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
The U.S. is averaging more than 116,000 new coronavirus infections a day along with about 50,000 hospitalizations, levels not experienced since the winter surge. Unlike other points in the pandemic, hospitals now have more non-COVID patients for everything from car accidents to surgeries that were postponed during the outbreak. That has contributed to the burden on nurses who were already fatigued after dealing with constant death among patients and illnesses in their ranks.
“Anecdotally, I’m seeing more and more nurses say, ‘I’m leaving, I’ve had enough,'” said Gerard Brogan, director of nursing practice with National Nurses United, an umbrella organization of nurses unions across the U.S. “‘The risk to me and my family is just too much.'”
COVID-19 hospitalizations have now surpassed the pandemic’s worst previous surge in Florida, with no signs of letting up, setting a record of 13,600 on Monday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 2,800 required intensive care. At the height of last year’s summer surge, there were more than 10,170 COVID-19 hospitalizations.
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