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Originally Posted by Deschodt
Not sure you're drawing the right conclusions, politics aside... The hospitals are empty because.....people are freaked out about getting covid while getting treatments...
I work for a huge hospital group, and people have been blowing off elective surgeries and sometimes required ones, people with cancer weren't coming for chemo or others not doing required tests to detect cancers early...Same with heart issues... The true damage of Covid will not be Covid, it'll be everything else that was not taken care of during 3-4 months of panic ;-( Our hospitals were bleeding something like 5-10 mil per DAY during the early months in lost revenue. We have recovered to almost normal business now, as much as it pains me to equate hospital to businesses but that's America for you - and indeed in CA anyway the ICU has very few Covid patients.
The word I get from the doctors I deal with is "we were really scared initially because we did not know this virus, understand all the side effects, and the info we got from China was complete BS.... Now we know how to treat people, how to keep them alive, unless you are super sick with co-morbidities we can keep you alive as long as it takes to recover" - they're not longer fearful. Not so say some folks don't suffer lung damage but...
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I agree with all this and the same is true at our hospitals. Our in-patient COVID positive numbers have been dropping for several weeks. Staff now knows so much more on treating this thing. We now have a in-house COVID testing lab equipment.
It seems the small town hospitals will suffer the most from the current surge. They barely have adequate staff to get by during normal times. All it takes is a few calling out sick and it effects the entire hospital. They can't afford the traveling nurses rates which can be twice a staff nurse costs. Rural hospitals have a large number of non-insured patients and not enough private insured to make up the difference in reimbursement rates. There have been several stories about this on-line if people what to look for them.