OK, I have to ask

[craigster59]

Originally Posted by URY914

We were calling to try to reserve hospital beds from our suppliers. But there are really only 2 bed suppliers we rent from and every hospital in the area is call the same 2.

This is how the conversion among the chain of command goes;

The VP asks the Director how many extra beds can we rent. The Director turns to the Manager and tells him to call our suppliers and see how many they have. The Supplier says they have 20, do you want me to deliver them? No just want to know how many you have.

So 6 hospitals in the area called the Suppler with the same question and he tells them he has 20.

None of the hospitals want to commit to having them delivered because that's when the clock starts on the rent.

So five days later the VP decides we want all 20. Supplier says sorry dude, all gone.

I know of a prop house in Atlanta that has a buttload of Hillrom and Stryker beds that are just sitting due to film production being shut down. PM me if you think they can be of use.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Bingo. Storage space is square footage. A hospital is running about $800 / s.f. now for new construction. If you want to build a 5,000 sq. ft. storeroom that’s $4M right there give or take.

Even charging the obscene amounts the providers do for routine / basic supplies that’s a heck of a lot of billable use to break even. And that’s strictly capital cost.

Could they store a lot of this kind of “doomsday scenario” stuff offsite? Sure. Maybe that’s something that’ll need to be considered as a “lessons learned” from this but I’m sure there are other factors too (shelf life, stock rotation, transport costs, security, etc.) but it’s very, very expensive to keep things on site.

[sc_rufctr]

Anyone with a sewing machine, some fabric, a pattern and access to furnace filters can make a mask.
But no one has provided a pattern or design. I would suggest people are doing this right now regardless.

This is something we could all do but without a pattern people have no idea of what would actually work.

A furnace filter like this one. (not sponge or metal reusable based)

[smadsen]

To me it seems like a" for profit" hospital's job is to maintain a proper back-up supply, whether it's bed sheets, scalpels, masks, back up generators, everything it takes to run a hospital. They all have multiple disaster plan scenarios. To blame the gov't is just dereliction of duty.

[aigel]

IMHO it is not the hospitals' but the government's job to stockpile PPE and equipment for a pandemic. It seems that experts thought it was fairly likely we get another respiratory virus after all the ones we have seen come and go earlier. Did nobody in the government believe them? All we needed to do is buy us some insurance.

We have the biggest military in the world, thousands of nuclear warheads, missile defense systems, intelligence, including cyber warfare etc. to keep us safe. We even stockpile oil in our strategic reserves - why can't we stockpile and rotate through a significant amount of PPE and equipment?

I sure expect a lot of this will change. One advantage the Asian countries had over us was that they had SARS hit them pretty good and they were prepared for the next one. Taiwan being the best example. I hope we will be better prepared and taking it more serious next time. We did miss the chance to test, trace and quarantine while it was still possible.

G