Hospital Full?

Email 12/12/2020

I wanted to relay an EMS experience we had recently while delivering a patient to the emergency room. Upon arrival we were told there were no beds available, so we waited against the wall with our patient on our stretcher. Luckily our patient was stable, because we waited a little over an hour for a bed. The reasoning was because the ER was "full". Not only could I see the bed list on a giant television hanging on the wall, I walked the ER myself. 1/4 of the beds were empty. They aren't reserved for 'covid', they're just empty. My best guess is that they are using a lack of staffing to declare a full ER. They fired and laid off a good number of nurses because of the empty ER during the pandemic. Now on a Saturday night, which is still light compared to Saturday nights of yester-year, they only run 3/4 of an ER and report that they're full?

That's what I'm seeing as of last weekend.

-President Elect Handy