Stimulus NOW: Staff up emergency rooms and understaffed hospitals!!

[lostnfound]

This thread in the health section about gross understaffing and budget cuts at a hospital is a clear case of something that we should be throwing federal money at, in the present circumstances.

Spend money on nurses and emergency room help at state hospitals immediately, and you 1) employ the unemployed who will mostly use that money to pay bills and buy stuff immediately, thereby stimulating the local economies 2) improve urgent health care, and 3) reduce stress on state budgets. You surely will save lives, so we don't have people dying in the halls waiting for care, as happens too often. This is a serious problem in every big city, and it affects all of us.

The idea that a civilized society can have patients in a hospital suffering from a lack of basic care while one harried nurse races around too busy to go to the bathroom taking care of 7 sick people, and meanwhile there are people out of work desparate for jobs, is senseless and unconscionable.

I don't know if this http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20090129/REG/301299962/-1/todaysnews">health provision in the House-passed stimulus bill would accomplish this, but this part sounds like a good start: "$1.5 billion for community health centers and $600 million to help shore up the ranks of primary care doctors".

We need the big picture of the bill and we need a strong list of the positives to counter the spin and focus on a handful of questionable earmarks. Where can we find that?

[eilen]

1. part of the reason for people in hallways

is because the hospital is full, there are no more beds and the ED has no place to put people. They either end up in the hall in the ED waiting for a bed there so they can be seen or admitted in a hallway upstairs adding to the short staffed nurse's patient assignment with no privacy, no bathroom, -- just a stretcher in the hall-- but that gets the ED moving and seeing the next patient. Neither one is a good solution. Hospitals cannot turf off their ED admissions to other hospitals that might have room either. I think the whole system is screwed up.

We have 4 Hospitals with ED's in our area, there is only one Level 1 Trauma Center which is at the State Hospital and we have a VA hospital. Maybe we need more Level 1 Trauma centers? Or perhaps we need more 24 hour urgent clinics in addition to ED's. Maybe we need both.