re: Hospitals are asking for donations of masks and other essential PPE

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but aren't they used in some capacity all of the time?

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Not at the amount being used right now.

Before all this...the only time you used an N95 was for caring for a confirmed/suspected patient with TB, measles, chickenpox, and disseminated shingles(meaning the shingles are in several areas of the body).

That's mostly it. Depending on the hospital region...they may not see TB that often. So while they need all HCWs trained and fitted on the N95s....the likelihood they will ever need to wear one is low.


So why would a hospital need to stockpile a massive amount of a mask they don't really use?

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Yeah frick the people working there because corporate hospital billed you.

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And then probably worked with you when you said you couldn't pay the original price.

Do people not know you can work with hospitals on costs?

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The big question Scruffy has is whether the masks actually degrade during that time or whether the manufacturer just puts an arbitrary number on the package to keep them buying supplies.

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The filter material doesn't degrade (not in close to a 5 year time frame anyway) the issue is the elastic band which does degrade and can impact the sealing ability of the respirator. The second thing to go would be the plastic around the valve but that will remain intact long after the elastic gives up the ghost. In most industries you would see reusable respirators like 3m 6000/7000 series half face but the problem in a medical environment is a reusable mask represents a fomite.

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Not at the amount being used right now.

Before all this...the only time you used an N95 was for caring for a confirmed/suspected patient with TB, measles, chickenpox, and disseminated shingles(meaning the shingles are in several areas of the body).

That's mostly it. Depending on the hospital region...they may not see TB that often. So while they need all HCWs trained and fitted on the N95s....the likelihood they will ever need to wear one is low.


So why would a hospital need to stockpile a massive amount of a mask they don't really use?

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Gotcha. Like I said, I know the use right now is way higher than normal, but it's clearly much higher than I even thought. I thought the usage was higher now just because hospitals are seeing more patients, not that they are hardly ever used in regular ops.

I still think maybe we need to consider stockpiling and just dealing with any obsolescence cost.

If anything this virus has really brought the morons out of the woodwork.

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The cost to do that would be pennies on the dollar compared to the current issues at hand.

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Hospitals aren’t exactly rolling in dough, at least not most of them.

Take Scruffy’s as an example.

The adult hospital is always a money loser. It is never in the black.

It is kept afloat by the pediatric hospital.

Most hospitals, especially smaller ones, ride a very fine line.

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Hospitals aren’t exactly rolling in dough, at least not most of them.

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And yet everyone complains that medical care is too expensive.

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This is no excuse lol

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It is when hospitals can’t afford to stockpile something that isn’t used very often and degraded over time.

Seriously, media and politics has really given everyone a skewed view of how much money hospitals make.

Scruffy does your hospital use UV light towers to disinfect rooms?


I'm reading about many hospitals using the UV tower to create a room where N95s can be UV'd and decontaminated.