Texas' new coronavirus surge is leaving critically sick patients stranded in rural areas, hospitals

[TomCADem]

Source: Texas Tribune

The man who arrived at the emergency room in Childress earlier this month did not have COVID-19, but he did have a serious abdominal condition that required surgery, hospital administrators said.

The man waited more than nine hours in the emergency room while doctors called eight larger hospitals to see if they could perform the surgery, said Holly Holcomb, chief operating officer for Childress Regional Medical Center. They declined to accept the patient, she said, and the man died.

“I’ve been here 24 years and I just don’t remember ever not being able to transfer a patient out,” said Holcomb, whose hospital sits near the Oklahoma border, roughly midway between Wichita Falls and Amarillo.

Rural doctors and hospital administrators in West Texas and the Panhandle say they’re in a bind as larger hospitals in Lubbock, Amarillo and El Paso fill with coronavirus patients, leaving the smaller facilities unable to transfer their most gravely ill patients to receive higher levels of care.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/29/texas-coronavirus-rural-hospitals/

[vercetti2021]

1. Amarillo is bad right now

We have cases spiking. My besties girlfriend has it, likely my bestie and her daughter are gonna get infected too.

[Ohiogal]

2. I hope that man's family sues that hospital

That he died is an outrage.

[dalton99a]

3. People have to wait in their cars

In Childress, the hospital’s six-bed emergency room has been stretched thin, Holcomb said, and health care workers have asked patients with COVID-19 symptoms to wait in their cars when possible. “They’re either stacking up in the waiting room or out in the parking lot,” she said.

Small-town doctors across Texas report having to hold extremely sick patients in emergency rooms and ambulances eight hours or longer because of bed shortages in larger hospitals’ intensive care units. And many say they’ve had to look for specialty care hundreds of miles away, sometimes across state lines.

Dr. Robert Hancock, who works at several hospitals in Texas and Oklahoma and is president of the Texas College of Emergency Physicians, said one of the hospitals recently admitted a COVID-19 patient with a host of other medical problems who needed specialized care.

“We had called every hospital in Oklahoma that had the capability we needed, every hospital system in Dallas-Fort Worth; Little Rock, Arkansas; Lubbock; Amarillo; Wichita Falls,” Hancock said.

“Over about an eight-hour period we got told ‘No’ by everybody,” he said. “We wound up having to keep the patient and just do the best we could with the resources we had.”

[keithbvadu2]

4. Not long ago, Abbot said Texas has plenty of hospital beds for Trumpvirus patients/victims.

Not long ago, Abbot said Texas has plenty of hospital beds for Trumpvirus patients/victims.

https://www.google.com/search?q=abbott+enough+hospital+beds&sxsrf=ALeKk03ncU_SWJpefnwaAISu1mDND1-Atw:1592871680252&ei=AEvxXuPlDvKyggfmxKugBw&start=0&sa=N&ved=2ahUKEwjj5bG11ZbqAhVymeAKHWbiCnQ4ChDx0wN6BAgLECs&biw=885&bih=404

[progree]

5. I hope these stories get thru to some of these fuckheads who keep yelling "Freedom!"

but probably too much to expect. Well maybe after some agonizing waiting-room or at-home deaths by family members and other people they know because there just aren't the medical personnel and facilities and resources and that's that.

[roamer65]

6. All of the anti-mask Dump lovers are to blame for these deaths.

[progree]

7. The true cost of North Dakota's strained hospitals: 'He could've easily died in my home'

Hunter lay sideways on the floor of the emergency room waiting area, his eyes rolled back in his head, with a plastic bag over his mouth to catch the vomit that violently emitted from his stomach.

His kidneys were shutting down.

Delirious with pain, he screamed to his mother “I can’t breathe!” Tammy Berger could only watch in horror as the color faded from her teenage son’s face.

Receptionists at Sanford Medical Center in Bismarck told Berger they couldn’t admit Hunter because there were no open beds. She pleaded with them to no avail.

About two agonizing hours later, Berger carried her still-heaving son out of the waiting room and called CHI St. Alexius, the other hospital in North Dakota’s capital city. They were full, too.

More: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/10/27/forum-the-true-cost-of-north-dakotas-strained-hospitals-he-couldve-easily-died-in-my-home

Another one for the "We Live In A Right Wing Hellhole" list

[DENVERPOPS]

8. It is getting scary......

and is about to get even more frightening and horrific with winter coming on.....

With ALL medical facilities, there is a shortage of Health Care Providers. With out them, a facility is nothing more than a
"warehouse".

All of us owe a great deal of gratitude to the health workers on the front lines, they are the true Heroes !!!!!!!!

Trump and his Republicons are promoting their form of genocide......