RSV, covid and flu are pushing U.S.hospitals to the brink

RSV, covid and flu push hospitals to the brink — and it may get worse Hospitals across the United States are overwhelmed, and experts believe conditions will deteriorate in coming months. Sabrina Malhi Washington Post

...Hospitals across the United States are overwhelmed. The combination of a swarm of respiratory illnesses (RSV, coronavirus, flu), staffing shortages and nursing home closures has sparked the state of distress visited upon the already overburdened health-care system. And experts believe the problem will deteriorate further in coming months.

This is not just an issue. This is a crisis,” said Anne Klibanski, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham in Boston. “We are caring for patients in the hallways of our emergency departments. There is a huge capacity crisis, and it’s becoming more and more impossible to take care of patients correctly and provide the best care that we all need to be providing.”

Along with a shortage of beds, Klibanski said her hospital system is extremely short-staffed. The fast-paced and anxiety-inducing environment of an emergency room is a deterrent for many health-care workers.

“Many people don’t want to work in hospitals,” Klibanski said. “There are other [less stressful] settings where they can work.”

The staffing shortages extend beyond physicians and nurses, and include technicians, respiratory therapists and other hard-to-fill jobs, Klibanski said.

More than half a million people in the health-care and social services sectors quit their positions in September — evidence, in part, of burnout associated with the coronavirus pandemic — and the American Medical Association says 1 in 5 doctors plan on leaving the field within two years.

The shortages have hit the health-care system like a tsunami, according to Thomas Balcezak, chief medical officer at Yale New Haven Health Hospital. He said physicians, nurses and support staff have experienced a shift in how the public treats them compared with 2020.

“When covid first hit, there would be all of these parades past our hospital where people would call health-care workers heroes,” Balcezak said. “Now, we’re seeing nurses who show up in scrubs try to sign up for apartments being turned down because [management companies] don’t want people living there who work in health care.”

Since the start of the pandemic, health-care workers have faced increasing violence, said Christopher S. Kang, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

According to the American Hospital Association, 44 percent of nurses reported physical violence, and 68 percent said they experienced verbal abuse since the pandemic began.

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