re: Whistle blower Josh Snider... MBMC Hospital admin lied to the public. Who else has lied?

quote:

---

Hospitals stay full ALL the time

---

Hospitals do stay full but COVID is clearly pushing capacities to the limits.

My parents work in a local hospital and unless they're lying, they've definitely been much more full compared with previous years due to the pandemic. Hospitals are designed to operate near full but if capacity is exceeded, units can't be produced that quickly. My parents would contradict this guy (and they don't have to lie) so I'm not sure this guy is that believable by extrapolating his hospital to other hospitals around the country. This is a crisis around the world - is he seriously suggesting that hospitals around the world are all lying? Even in those countries where there is no profit motive in medicine? It's laughable.

And because hospitals are designed to stay near full, it means that capacity can't be scaled up very quickly. You've just demonstrated the problem and the exact reason there's a crisis in your comment.

And the issue isn't just capacity. It's staffing capacity. ICU units are very staff intensive - you can't just train someone overnight. It takes a long time to train people. If hospitals are designed to be near full, there wouldn't be enough staff when there are surges which is exactly the problem.