hospitals-battle-overcrowding,-staffing-shortages

Hospitals battle overcrowding, staffing shortages

Lifestyle

Local hospitals are battling overcrowded facilities and staffing shortages. Now, they’ve even been forced to divert ambulances to other healthcare facilities.

“It feels like failure to us,” said Danny Greig, the medical director of the emergency department at MidMichigan Health in Midland.

Grieg said since September the hospital has been on diversion four times for a total of 10 hours. Grieg said a big reason for that is the number of patients.

“We are breaking records every month. Starting in May we essentially have set a new volume record every month and we’re on target to set another new one this month,” Grieg said.

Another factor is staff shortages.

“There just aren’t enough nurses. There’s not enough ancillary staff. And what’s happening in our area is if one of our big hospitals goes on diversion, that puts an extra strain on the next hospital which leads them to go on diversion, and it’s a domino effect,” Greig said.

Greig tells TV5 a combination of issues contributing to the high patient count. Covid-19 is part of it but only 37 of the 250 patients there are dealing with covid.

Greig said there are other patients who have put off getting care during the pandemic who are sicker now. No matter the cause, the effect is a hospital nearly full of patients with staff doing what they can to treat them.

“It used to be that days like today when you’ve got 45 patients on the board in a 24 bed ER, you know those happened every couple times a month. It was unusual and you’d say ‘oh boy what about that bad day we had’. Now every day is a bad day and it’s wearing on people. And the morale is not what it used to be but I think we’re holding up ok,” Greig said. “Try and have some patience with us. When you go to the ER you might have to wait a little bit longer. We’re keeping an eye on you. We’re going to meet your needs. We’re going to see you. You’re going to get good care.”

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