“The problem is you can’t get them to where they need to be, and now it puts the ER doc in the position of having to function like the hospitalist or the intensive care doctor, and that’s not a role that we’re really supposed to be in,” said Dr. ICUs and other hospital units are staffed with doctors, nurses and other support personnel who have specialized training and experience caring for critically ill patients in need of specific medical interventions, whereas the mission of emergency department medical workers is to quickly assess patients, stabilize them and get them to where they need to be. The only reason this is happening is because we are being forced to do it.”Īlthough hospital leaders say they are working to provide high-quality care for patients being held in emergency rooms - in part by bringing specialized medical staff and equipment to patients being treated there - studies done before the coronavirus pandemic show that the longer patients stay in ERs, the worse their outcomes. This is not something we would choose to do. “Normally that patient would just go to an ICU bed, but because there are no beds available, they continue to board in the emergency room,” said Harris Health System president and CEO Esmaeil Porsa, who oversees the city’s two public safety-net hospitals. But increasingly in Houston, particularly for patients suffering from COVID-19, there’s nowhere for them to go.
Those sick or injured enough to require hospitalization are then moved to other areas of the hospital for specialized care. Typically when people arrive at a hospital emergency department, they’re evaluated and treated by the medical staff. Officials in Houston are warning that the situation could become a replay of what happened in New York City in March and April, when thousands of people died as hospitals struggled to keep up with the surge of patients, but without the same level of government intervention to stem the tide. ProPublica and NBC News have previously reported that a public hospital in Houston ran out of a medication to treat COVID-19 patients and that a spike in at-home deaths from cardiac arrest suggests that the death toll from the coronavirus may be higher than official statistics show. The increase in ambulance diversions, coupled with the spike in patients being held indefinitely in emergency rooms, are the latest indicators that Houston hospitals are straining to keep up with a surge of new coronavirus patients. HOUSTON - Houston hospitals have been forced to treat hundreds of COVID-19 patients in their emergency rooms - sometimes for several hours or multiple days - as they scramble to open additional intensive care beds for the wave of seriously ill people streaming through their doors, according to internal numbers shared with NBC News and ProPublica.Īt the same time, the region’s 12 busiest hospitals are increasingly telling emergency responders that they cannot safely accept new patients, at a rate nearly three times that of a year ago, according to data reviewed by reporters. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
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