Some Inland Empire hospitals are nearing the breaking point as numerous healthcare workers call out sick and their colleagues struggle to treat patients during the second-worst wave of a coronavirus pandemic that refuses to end.
While the omicron surge isn’t yet putting as many people in the hospital as were treated at this time last year, the emergency room in places such as San Antonio Regional Hospital is busier this time around, said Cathy Rebman, a spokesperson for the Upland medical center.
The surge is combining with more people seeking care for conditions that went untreated earlier in the pandemic and a high absentee rates among workers to put extra pressure on the hospital, Rebman wrote in an email.
At Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley, officials are seeing a surge in COVID-19 patients and people who “may have put off receiving the care they need during the pandemic” at the Riverside County-operated hospital, spokesperson Sarah Rodriguez wrote in an email.
One of the hardest-hit emergency rooms is the one at San Bernardino County-run Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.
Dr. Troy Pennington, an Arrowhead emergency-room physician, said earlier this week the hospital was “drowning in COVID,” as every other arriving patient complained of not being able to breathe.
“We have lots and lots of COVID patients in the ER,” Pennington said. “We don’t have any beds. We don’t have any place to put them.”
On Tuesday, Jan. 18, Arrowhead was treating 123 coronavirus patients, 98 of them unvaccinated, hospital spokesperson Justine Rodriguez said. Rodriguez said 34 people — half of them confirmed with COVID-19 — were holding in the emergency room for beds.
As beds fill across the region, the sick showing up at hospital doors are waiting hours to be admitted.
“It’s not unusual to have a stay in the emergency room of 12 hours or longer,” said Dr. Adrian Cotton, chief of medical operations at Loma Linda University Health, where the number of patients treated on Tuesday exceeded the Loma Linda adult hospital’s licensed 320-bed capacity by 10%. Some patients were staying in hallways and conference rooms, Cotton said.
It’s not just the number of available beds factoring into those delays, Rebman said, it’s also reduced staffing levels.
Dr. Michael Neri Jr., Riverside County area medical director for Kaiser Permanente, said one of the biggest differences between how hospitals fared in 2021 and how they are doing now is the high number of healthcare workers out sick due to omicron’s contagiousness — and the intense pressure that’s putting on healthy nurses and doctors scrambling to fill the gap.
“They are very tired and working hard — harder than normal,” Neri said.
Dr. Timothy D. Jenkins, San Bernardino County area medical director for Kaiser Permanente and chief of staff for its hospitals in Ontario and Fontana, wrote that the number of staffers out sick is double the number out the winter before the pandemic.
“Staffing is significantly worse than it was a year ago,” Cotton said, adding that Loma Linda has been trying to fill the gap with traveling nurses but they are difficult to find because they are in high demand.
The sheer number of people seeking help is taxing hospitals.
For example, Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center usually sees about 260 patients a day in its emergency room, hospital spokesperson Amber Brenneisen said.
“During this surge period, volume has increased to an average of 350 visits per day, with some days approaching 400 visits,” she wrote in an email.
The sharp rise in visits is in part due to people seeking to be tested for COVID-19, she wrote, saying those who have no symptoms or mild symptoms are asked to go to testing sites or use at-home test kits.
The Pomona hospital opened additional patient care units and an overflow emergency department unit, and set up surge tents to assess the condition of people with COVID-19, who make up 30% of hospital patients, Brenneisen wrote.
Similarly, Rodriguez said the Riverside County hospital has set up a “holding area” so people waiting to be admitted don’t have to wait in the emergency room.
In Upland, Rebman wrote, San Antonio Regional Hospital “has not converted non-clinical spaces to create additional bed capacity for patients. However, a tent is being used to expand the waiting area for patients seeking care in our emergency department.”
While still below the frightening peaks of January 2021, hospitalizations for COVID-19 across the Inland Empire continued to rise this week.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 patients being treated in hospitals on Tuesday stood at 4,799 in Los Angeles County, 1,201 in San Bernardino County and 1,109 in Riverside County, state data show.
In Riverside County, 84% of licensed hospital beds were occupied as of Monday, Jan. 17, and 35% pf the patients were being treated for COVID-19, wrote Shane Reichardt, spokesperson for the county Emergency Management Department. He said 96% of intensive care unit beds were occupied.
In San Bernardino County, about 76% of regular beds were occupied as of Tuesday, according to the county’s dashboard COVID-19 report. In hospitals that exceeded their capacity, 226 people were being cared for in extra beds that have been added.
About 40% of hospital beds in San Bernardino County were filled with coronavirus patients.
Neri, the Kaiser Permanente director in Riverside County, said about 90% of beds were filled as of Tuesday in the healthcare firm’s Riverside and Moreno Valley hospitals — and 75% of those patients have COVID-19.
The situation isn’t as bad as it was a year ago, Neri said. Then, he said, “it was very much like a war setting. The patients were in rooms that we couldn’t ever imagine would be (patient care) rooms.”
At San Antonio Regional, the number of coronavirus patients was down from a peak of 250 a year ago to about 120 on Wednesday, Jan. 19, Rebman wrote.
Rebman said, however, that the Upland hospital’s beds were full, and at one point earlier this month its emergency room had nearly 100 patients in the waiting room. Coupled with nursing shortages brought on by COVID-19 illness and early retirements, many healthcare workers believe “this current surge has been more difficult than the surge experienced last year at this time,” she wrote.
Cotton, the medical chief at Loma Linda University Health, noted that many nurses have been leaving the profession across the region and nation.
For going on two years, the pandemic “just keeps coming and coming,” he said, and “the never ending nature of this” is driving people to seek other work.
“Anybody can do anything when there is a finish line ahead,” Cotton said. “There is no finish line here and that is what is making this hard.”
Several registered nurses at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center spoke to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Jan. 11, about their frustration with the working conditions there. One was Brandy Reinhart, who has worked at the hospital 13 years.
“I’ve always planned on retiring from the county,” Reinhart said, according to the meeting videotape. “However, the current state of the hospital is unbearable.”
There is shortage of supplies. There has been a “mass exodus” of nurses, she said.
“We work daily without breaks, lunches or the opportunity to even use the restroom,” she said. “Morale is at an all-time low.”
“I stand before you today to tell you that your hospital is crumbling from the ground up,” she said, her voice breaking.
Brenda Gomez told supervisors she was in her first nursing job, and after a couple years, “I’m already burned out.”
A staffing shortage is causing much of the angst, Gomez said, urging supervisors to boost pay to attract and keep more nurses.
Healthcare officials, though, refuse to give up.
Cotton said that, while some hospitals such as Loma Linda are near the breaking point, “we will never hit the breaking point” because of doctors’ and nurses’ passion for caring for patients.
“Physicians and staff are feeling exhausted by the duration and intensity of this pandemic,” wrote Jenkins, Kaiser’s San Bernardino County area director.
But, he added, “We will get through this!”
Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our Twitter, & Facebook
We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.
For all the latest Health & Fitness News Click Here
