Tim McCann

We keep hearing about the over-worked, under-served, totally excused hospital staff that are suffering on the front lines of the war against the Coronavirus.

That may be true in ICU’s in some cities, but that’s not the whole story.

Here is the rest of it:

With some hospital beds empty, healthcare workers go on furlough

TUCSON, Ariz. (KOLD News 13) – In the midst of an international pandemic which is still weeks away from its predicted peak, some hospitals on Tucson are furloughing some of its staff.

Which ones and how many isn’t clear yet, but it’s enough to catch the attention of some government officials who worry it could have an effect on the COVID-19 response when cases begin to spike.

“They are being forced to make some very, very hard decisions as they see their revenue streams shrink,” Pima County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia, said. “And some of those decisions have to do with staff.”

Huntsville Hospital system furloughs and reduces hours for 2,000 employees

A spokesperson for the Huntsville Hospital System confirms that approximately 2,000 employees have had their work hours reduced or been furloughed.

The reductions in work hours and furloughs are due to a “low census” at the hospital caused by the stoppage of elective procedures at the hospital’s facilities due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Kentucky hospital to furlough 300 employees in ‘unprecedented times’

St. Claire HealthCare in Morehead, Ky. announced on Thursday that it will furlough 300 employees who are not involved in direct patient care to maintain its financial security after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The furloughs impact about 25% of the hospital’s workforce and will take place March 26. Those employees will still receive insurance and hospital officials said they hope the cuts are temporary. Other remaining staff will experience a reduction in hours.

In the past few weeks, St. Claire HealthCare has suspended elective procedures to free up bed capacity. That has significantly reduced revenue, the system said in a statement.

Mayo Clinic announces sweeping pay cuts, furloughs

The state’s largest private employer is instituting across the board pay cuts and furloughs to shoulder a projected $3 billion loss this year.

Mayo Clinic’s cost-cutting measures follow its decision in mid-March to halt elective surgeries and procedures — a move that was quickly applied statewide as part of Gov. Tim Walz’s executive order to suspend non-critical medical procedures not deemed essential to save a life.

“The decision to eliminate elective surgeries and outpatient visits was the right decision in terms of protecting the safety of our patients and staff, and also preserving limited PPE (personal protective equipment),” said Chief Administrative Officer Jeff Bolton. “But it has led to significant reductions in revenues.”

Bolton said the hospital in Rochester is at about 35 percent of capacity, while capacity in Mayo’s surgery services is at about 25 percent.

80 hospitals furloughing workers in response to COVID-19

Many U.S. hospitals and health systems have suspended elective procedures to save capacity, supplies and staff to treat COVID-19 patients.

As a result of suspending these nonemergent procedures, several systems have lost or expect to lose a large chunk of their annual revenue, forcing them to make cost reduction a top priority.

Notice a trend?

Everyone from the Federal government on down was reliant on the Univerity of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model for the spread of Coronavirus.  The initial model radically overestimated the number of needed hospital beds and ventilators for COVID patients.

Updated COVID-19 estimates find that need for hospital beds, ICU beds, and ventilators needed to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic are less than previously estimated.

Based upon the initial estimates, hospitals across the country put a hold on “elective” procedures, or procedures not immediately life-threatening.  Not just surgeries like gender-transition addadicktomes but things like hip replacements and cancer surgeries.

So hospitals let operating rooms and recovery rooms sit empty.  They didn’t take in revenue.  They prepared to be swamped and full of dying COVID-19 patients.

The thing is, outside of a few places, like New York City, Chicago, and Detroit, these hospital swampings never happened.

A month ago, this headline was published:

Coronavirus: Tucson Has Acute Hospital Bed Shortage, Report Says

The report, using data compiled by the Harvard Global Health Institute, says Tucson would need to add another 2,750 beds over a 12-month period, or 2.3 times the number that currently exist. That’s assuming a “moderate” outbreak in which 40 percent of Tucson area residents require hospitalization for coronavirus infections.

As of 2018, Tucson had 2,680 total hospital beds, of which about 56 percent were occupied, potentially leaving only 1,180 beds open for additional patients.

Pima County, Arizona had 591 Coronavirus cases.

The Huntsville Hospital system has over 1,800 beds but Madison County only had 186 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with the number of new cases trending downward.

Morehead is in Rowan County, Kentucky.  The latest news from Rowan County is that they have had a whopping ONE Coronavirus case, and it was diagnosed three days ago.  St. Claire HealthCare is a 159-bed hospital with a staff of over 1,200 people.

Assuming that they followed the national guidelines, they have been shut down for almost a month doing absolutely nothing but treating ER cases.

It seems that this is the pattern across many places in America.  Hospitals set aside nearly all of their available space and resources for a COVID-19 surge that never materialized and now that the month has rolled over and the billing is being done, the hospital accountants are having to deal with the fact that hospitals took in only a small fraction of their usual revenue.

So the bean-counters are doing what the bean-counters do and are furloughing or laying off staff in these departments that were shut down as elective or unnecessary during the Coronacrisis.

Of course, no hospital wants to be the first to turn the elective services back on, just in case the surge comes and get savaged by the media or sued by angry patients.

As a result, we still have patients suffering from diseases who need surgeries, hospital beds sitting empty, and medical staff being downsized.

Huntsville, Alabama, rural, Kentucky, and much of the rest of America are not New York City, and to apply New York City guidelines to our hospitals based on models of virus transmission for places like New York City did not help and only harmed them.

When this is all over, the nationwide canceling of routine scheduled procedures will probably go down in history as the biggest over-reaction to COVID-19 and the subsequent furloughs as the biggest fuckup.

From putting non-life-savings surgeries on hold to shuttering Synagogues on Passover and Churches on Easter, when the dust settles, I suspect that many people outside a few high population density hotspots are going to be very, very pissed off by how much disruption they had to endure for a problem that wasn’t really a big problem in their area.