Staff Shortages Imminent Due to Covid 19 Surge

  • Thread starter Thread starter CradleRC58
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
He could have appointed someone to work with them. Some sort of plan rather than assuming it will blow over.

I do think he was wise not to attempt micromanaging individual states. But I don’t sense true leadership regarding the pandemic on his part.

What’s up with him telling the American people a second stimulus check would be issued soon ? And not following up in it ? That’s feeding them false hope. And it’s cruel.

Yea, I voted for him. Twice. And now I regret voting for him this time around. I don’t like Biden, but he is now my president and I wish him the best. And if Trump were worthy of his office, he’d be working with Biden on this pandemic. But he won’t. That’s just not a priority for him evidently.
 
RhodesianSon said:
If this is the emergency they claim it is, with the duration they claim it’s going to last, surely that would be worth the time? If they’d started it in March they’d have a lot more nurses available now. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people crying about a problem they’re not attempting to mitigate. They’ve had 8 months to expand capacity for care, which is what the whole “two weeks to flatten the curve” was supposed to be about. Buying the hospitals time to gear up. Seems they didn’t bother to do it.
Click to expand...
Please just stop. It is embarrassing. The nation is suffering and all you can do is blame the health care industry? For shame!
 
I’m not blaming them. Sickness is out of anyone’s control. I just want to know why they haven’t expanded capacity which is what all that flatten the curve stuff was supposed to be about. To buy time.
 
RhodesianSon said:
I’m not blaming them. Sickness is out of anyone’s control. I just want to know why they haven’t expanded capacity which is what all that flatten the curve stuff was supposed to be about. To buy time.
Click to expand...
I suppose it was due to lack of money and to this nation’s abysmal federal response to the pandemic that was supposed to go from 15 cases down to zero in a short amount of time, and magically disappear when the whether got warmer.
 
Pattylt said:
Part of the problem is they had no idea if we were actually going to get a second wave and when
Click to expand...
I can’t agree with that Patty. They had to know there was a good chance it would come roaring back. With no cure or vaccine yet, why wouldn’t it ?

I was confident it would. It’s just how pandemics work. I just pray that the vaccines make it manageable.
 
It would have been gone by now if we hadn’t done this silliness of trying to hide from it by staying inside.

The numbers were always going to go down with social distancing, and then back up when restrictions are lifted. That cycle is going to continue until we’ve built up resistance in our population, either through exposure or vaccination.
 
CradleRC58 said:
I can’t agree with that Patty. They had to know there was a good chance it would come roaring back. With no cure or vaccine yet, why wouldn’t it ?
Click to expand...
I agree that even the Spanish flu warned us a second wave would come…but actually preparing and spending big bucks on it by upper management is an effort in futility. We’ve had severe shortages in various areas of healthcare for years. Management is NEVER proactive, only reactive. Ask @Peeps about lab shortages if you want a KNOWN shortage situation and how her hospital is addressing it. I’m curious, too. I retired three years ago and we were desperate then. We weren’t able to replace retiring techs much less increasing staff to deal with a pandemic. She works microbiology and she does the testing for Covid…a new test that didn’t even exist three years ago. I have no idea how my old lab is dealing with hundreds of tests that weren’t on the docket three years ago! Last I heard, they just added them into the workload and it gets done…somehow! They probably added a lab assistant to “help” …an assistant that isn’t able to perform the test!
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Please just stop. It is embarrassing. The nation is suffering and all you can do is blame the health care industry? For shame!
Click to expand...
Hospitals are all run like a business. Profit or non-profit, doesn’t matter. Cash flow is important either way. Their cash flow was helped considerably by the ACA. Something you’ve consistently overlooked. When their ability to take care of patients for non-emergency procedures was removed for three months, there went that cash flow. I know I brought it up here several times. A lot of documentation on this at that time. The hospitals were near empty and hurting during that time. But crickets from you and your ilk. Many hospitals were furloughing, laying off and reducing hours for doctors and nurses when these personnel could have been trained for this work. I seem to recall there was a lot of spouting about what if there’s a second wave back then. Well the time to get in front of it was back then, not today. “Too cheap” to do this? That’s on the hospitals. Now they’re whining? That’s rich.

It wasn’t Trump who ordered that. You should look to your vaunted CDC and their “flatten the curve” talk they shouted from the roof tops way back when. How quickly that is forgotten when it makes the shouters look bad.
 
Last edited:
RhodesianSon said:
It would have been gone by now if we hadn’t done this silliness of trying to hide from it by staying inside.

The numbers were always going to go down with social distancing, and then back up when restrictions are lifted. That cycle is going to continue until we’ve built up resistance in our population, either through exposure or vaccination.
Click to expand...
That is just an idiotic claim that does not even deserve to be taken seriously.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
That is just an idiotic claim that does not even deserve to be taken seriously.
Click to expand...
Yours is a truly idiotic reply given what’s happened with this second wave and the renewed restrictions that come with it.
 
Last edited:
Ok, let’s cancel restrictions. Line the halls in our hospitals with Gurnies again and order more refrigerated trailers.

Got chest pain ? Perhaps you’ll get lucky with the nitro pill they give you. Just sit in your vehicle. They’ll check on you when they get a chance.

Need a doctor appt ? Sorry, doc’s not in today. He’s helping out in the tent in the fairgrounds parking lot. Pandemic and all.

Sound like hyperbole ? Sure it does. Until it isn’t. We saw it in various places in the spring and we are seeing some of it the past week or so.

Thank goodness the flu isn’t bad yet.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Well the time to get in front of it was back then, not today. “Too cheap” to do this? That’s on the hospitals. Now they’re whining? That’s rich.
Click to expand...
What’s the alternative? I agree they didn’t beef up staffing or prepare for a second wave. Those are the business decisions that all hospitals seemed to have made. So, they shouldn’t whine. Agreed. But, should we let them go bankrupt and close? This isn’t a local restaurant. These are community hospitals expected to respond to community disasters.

Is it time to look at regulating them? How about the for profit hospitals? Personally, I’d love to see them close…healthcare should never have been allowed to be a for profit in my world…but, there they are…raking in the money when times are normal and failing us when they aren’t.
 
CradleRC58 said:
Yea, I voted for him. Twice. And now I regret voting for him this time around. I don’t like Biden, but he is now my president and I wish him the best. And if Trump were worthy of his office, he’d be working with Biden on this pandemic. But he won’t. That’s just not a priority for him evidently.
Click to expand...
Oh please. If that bothers you, you must loathe the Democrats. Which ones worked with Trump on anything of note, including a COVID response? They were two busy doing a sham impeachment when this was really kicking off. Did you see the “stimulus bill” Pelosi was pitching, and what was actually in it? It should never see the light of day. If the left cared about helping people, a stimulus bill wouldn’t contain the amount of unrelated pork as that one did.

Plenty of blame to go around, but faulting Trump for not working with the Democrats is like blaming a prisoner for not sharing his meal with the guy whipping him constantly. And IIRC, Obama wasn’t exactly known for working with Republicans either. How many Republicans were able to read and also voted yes on the ACA? That’d be zero.

People can regret voting for Trump all they want. Call us in four years when the population is vaccinated thanks to Trump (developed in historic, record-setting time), and we have had four years of Joe Biden running the ship aground.

One day America will realize we have a lot less control over much in this world than we think, and God is ultimately in control. But if we’d realized that, we wouldn’t have closed off our Masses like willing sheep being led to slaughter either. If our Church leaders don’t see that, why would the faithful?
 
Pattylt said:
These are community hospitals expected to respond to community disasters.
Click to expand...
I gotta laugh. That hasn’t stopped hospitals from being closed in the past.
Pattylt said:
Is it time to look at regulating them? How about the for profit hospitals? Personally, I’d love to see them close…healthcare should never have been allowed to be a for profit in my world…but, there they are…raking in the money when times are normal and failing us when they aren’t.
Click to expand...
They are already heavily regulated by the ACA which they had a big part in writing to make sure they were going to get their cash flow.

Regarding profit vs non-profit hospitals: believe it or not, cash flow is every bit as important to a non-profit hospital as to a for-profit hospital. Plus one ought to look up the salary of the Kaiser CEO. It might shock you. It may be a non-profit, but the executives sure don’t act like it.
 
I worked healthcare for 27 years…you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I would expect Kaiser’s CEO to be amongst the highest paid…they’re a huge organization. I have problems with the amounts many CEOs make…it’s become obscene.

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s is when many hospitals began failing and closing. Smaller independent hospitals either closed or merged with larger organizations…mostly for the huge benefits of group buying.

My hospital was originally an independent facility when I first started working there. Then they became Lutheran Health Systems which then merged with Banner Healthcare. Each merger saw our labs losing the ability to purchase the equipment we needed and instead, who ever got the best contracts…to the detriment of our specific needs.

As a non profit hospital, there aren’t shareholders looking for profit…instead, profitable years meant building more ancillary facilities…but, never lowering any prices the patients paid…for anything. Nor did our wages rise from it. The only times we got decent raises was when shortages forced wages up. The actual mergers tended to freeze our wages because the other facilities within the group made less…techs in lower cost areas made less, so our wages were frozen for four years to match them…nevermind that our area was a higher cost of living!

I know our system is messed up. What I doubt is that any meaningful fixes will be implemented. The higher ups have too much to lose and a powerful lobby. I’m tired of healthcare being a shell game. Should reagents for an analyzer cost three times as much to an independent hospital than one within an organization that has so much more bargaining power? That’s the way the game is played today. As far as I’m aware, there are no more independent hospitals serving their communities and its needs. They are just still located in the community but could care less how well they serve it. If I lived somewhere where a chain hospital is located in a small town, I’d be waiting for it to be turned into a quick care facility and hospital patients are transported…often miles away…for care. It’s more financially reasonable but certainly not what the town needs!
 
Last edited:
Wow, my county is at 91% risk.

My son, daughter in law, and granddaughter will be coming for dinner. The rest of the family already lives with us. They have been isolating as much as possible…even my granddaughter hasn’t seen any of her friends in person for almost two weeks. We all agreed that anyone having any symptoms that could possibly be Covid, well call it off. So far, we’re all healthy.

We are taking all the steps we can, short of not gathering, that we can. This is the first year my son has had thanksgiving off in 14 years. Some semblance of life has to continue! Christmas will be a wait and see. We will all get the vaccine as soon as it’s possible to get it. We’re hoping that will be our Christmas present this year! Not one of us is more concerned with possible risks to the vaccine over getting back to living again!
 
I just wish we had some more bodies to help with the work.

I have a fever this morning–I got tested for COVID this past Sunday because my father-in-law tested positive and I had contact with him. But my COVID test was negative.

My husband also has a fever and congestion, and he got tested for COVID on Saturday, but his test was sent to Utah and still isn’t back yet.

Would you believe that while I was waiting for my COVID test results, our employee health department told me, “Sure you can go back to work as long as you don’t have symptoms.”

Well, I didn’t have symptoms on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, but yesterday I started feeling sicker. I thought it might be because we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to do all the work. As soon as I thought I was getting near finishing, a stack of tests would come in .

And stacks of boxes of supplies to unload–ALL SUMMER LONG, we had protests in our city from BLM and the protestors lamented not having job opportunities–WHY WON’T OUR STUPID HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION SEE THAT THESE ARE JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN VICTIMS OF SYSTEMIC RACISM AND LACK OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR TWO CENTURIES–and HIRE THESE PEOPLE to help us unpack boxes and stamp them with today’s date! They don’t even have to put them away–we can do that! But just getting them out of the big packing boxes onto a cart and stamped–that would be heaven!

It just makes me so mad that our administration has so little imagination!!! This could be a way for people to get started working in health care careers and earn a decent living wage.

Remember, I just had knee replacement surgery 7 weeks ago, and I came back to work at 4 weeks. Thank goodness I had that surgery! I have no pain now, and that’s a mercy.

This fever and stuffy head feels like a stupid headcold, which isn’t surprising considering how exhausted all of us are. I’m glad I’m off work on Tsgiving Day. At least I hope I am. If someone gets sick, they’ll call us to come to work.

Oh–none of this is Pres. Trump’s fault or Pres. Elect Biden’s fault. This is the fault of people who know that no matter how busy and tired we are, we lab workers will keep working until we’re dead.

And we do it all with no mention of our profession on those “tributes to front-line workers.” We’re just rats working in the lab in the basement.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top