hospital, bed, doctor

Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Half of hospital beds are full, yet only 31 Patients with COVID reported by the Health Dept. are currently hospitalized.  The math doesn’t add up.  

Look around most medium to larger cities and you will see high rise towers on hospitals and health care campuses around the country. Do you believe for a minute that half of those beds are full?  They are half empty. For many years now I have toured hospitals as a part of my work history and found entire wings and floors uninhabited.  

The administrations keep the facilities on a very bare-bones day to day operation when it comes to staffing with Nurses and other health care workers to save money.   Oftentimes this is the reason you will hear stories of waiting in the emergency department for a room to come available.   What?   You don’t have a room?   Yeah, we have the room, in fact, plenty of them.  We will wait for Mr. Jones to be discharged to get his room available for you, then the next shift of nurses will be ready.   They are unwilling to pay for the staffing to be prepared for “what may happen”.  

  When I was working in the Fire Department we oftentimes would be asked the question, “what do you guys do when there is no fire?”   We were paid for what we “might” have to do just as much as what we were doing on a day to day basis.   And when (you know what) happened, you could count on us being there, usually within 6 minutes.  

Our hospital system is not set up that way.   They have huge overhead, spend millions on marketing and have highly bloated Administrative costs and other Projects that literally suck resources away from “what they may have to do”,  Health Care.   In short, they are not prepared for unexpected rushes on the system such as the current viral pandemic.  

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *