She broke the foot several days ago and was transported to the hospital. They wanted to get her into surgery but delayed because of possible incoming covid cases and sent her home.
Two days later she's been sitting in the same chair at home because she can't walk, and her hygiene is uncared for. An ambulance was called again today but when they arrived the medics told them that the hospital wasn't admitting anything but 'emergency' patients, and apparently a 92 year old woman with a broken foot stewing in her own juice in a living room chair isn't an emergency.
This is a motherfucking crime, and neither the government nor the health care system gives one shit about it. I'm boiling with hatred for every one of these thugs.
I do understand your concern and frustration. I've had family that broke their bones recently that couldn't get it taken care of because of Covid and we were steamed about it. But I also have several other family in the medical field right now and they are getting swamped with Delta cases. Apparently, the major hospital in my hometown has 0 beds available because of Delta cases. It's extremely frustrating, I empathize with you as I had a similar experience, but the hospital is weighing admitting your grandmother, who probably is not going to die because of her injury, versus keeping a spot open for someone who will very probably come in shortly and need emergency care pronto or they die. I don't say this to be rude or that guy, but just to give some context and let people know this isn't just a hospital profit thing or something like that.
So 18 months into a supposed pandemic and hospitals are still unable to deal with the extra load? They're just caught completely unawares and unprepared by this thing that's been the central focus of the entire worldwide medical and governmental apparatus since January 2020? Despite building and tearing down multiple emergency field hospitals that never saw a single patient?
This isn't January 2020 anymore where you can plausibly use the element of surprise as an excuse.
It's a new variant called Delta, which is much more contagious than the previous strand. It's not "Oh, hey look, COVID is back, woops, didn't see that coming." No one knew how infectious this strand would be until it hit. Do you think all the doctors and healthcare workers are just making up their heavy case loads?
I think if you shut down the world for 18 months because you need time to prepare for a virus you don't get to use "we were caught off guard!" as an excuse anymore, even if it mutates.
And I do think hospitals have a financial incentive to reimburse things as WuFlu, yes. CPT codes and reimbursement rule the healthcare industry; I have firsthand knowledge of this.
Unironically, yes.
A woman in the UK was arrested for filming an empty hospital. This isn't the first time people have been curious why empty hospitals are reporting that they are totally overwhelmed. Nor is it the first time they have faced extreme backlash for pointing out that the hospitals were empty.
Would they make up heavy case loads?
Of course, they already do.
https://www.lotuseaters.com/woman-arrested-for-filming-empty-uk-hospital-31-12-20
Well, 4 questions:
Signs point to yes. Maybe a few hospitals are legitimately overloaded (including your local hospital), but most are **PROVABLY ** not overwhelmed. My local hospital - which has 410 beds - had a total of 6 virus cases as of yesterday.
Looking up data for my whole state (NY), the numbers are as follows:
Total hospitalized: 1162 Total ICU: 239
Across a state with nearly 20 million people, 1100 cases and 200 ICU beds isn't going to overwhelm anyone or anything. NYC on its own has about half of that (527 hospitalized, 107 ICU), and even that is a drop in the bucket. See, for example, this PDF from a few years back (intentionally grabbing something before the virus to exclude any arguments about surge capacity being added/removed) which says "The city has 62 active hospitals, with a combined capacity of 26,451 beds."
And, looking at the CDC data, even in HHS region 4 (which has the highest number of per-capita hospitalizations), there's still only 5.44 hospitalizations per 100,000 people (and nationwide it is 2.54 hospitalizations per 100,000). Again, local clusters may make one or two hospitals get overwhelmed but if you can't have 6 people hospitalized for every 100,000 in the country there's much larger problems.