Important COVID-19 Surge Information from Kansas Hospital Medical Directors
The University of KS Health System hosted a Crisis Standard of Care Communication session yesterday morning. Sixteen Medical Directors from hospitals throughout Kansas presented during this session on the dire state hospitals are currently in due to the current COVID-19 surge. The current surge is, without a doubt, the highest surge hospitals have experienced during this pandemic.
A few of the messages from the session were as follows:
-The number of people dying while waiting for transfer to higher level care has quintupled from the lack of staffing and high volume of patients.
-Critical access hospitals and other facilities are being forced to care for patients who they don’t have expertise or specialties needed as they cannot get them transferred to already over-full and stressed higher level care facilities. This includes cases of cardiac intervention, critical care services, dialysis, Pediatric specialty and Pediatric trauma. If a suitable facility is found it may be extremely far away.
-All of this is exacerbated by staffing shortages.
I strongly recommend viewing this presentation as we all reassess our current infection control measures and response efforts.
