Quote: @Vikergirl said:
https://twitter.com/TIME/status/12444827...47904?s=19
My mother in law, a retired nurse flies out tomorrow morning to start work there Wednesday. To put that in perspective the organization she does this volunteer work for is usually in 3rd world countries. Countries that are victims of genocide, civil war, horrific poverty, droughts famine etc. Shes usually in countries you could never find on a map 9 out of 10 times. Tomorrow shes in NYC!
My brother in law is an er tech at a city hospital in Iowa that is located in the county with the highest CONFIRMED cases in the state. He has stopped answering/returning calls from the hospital department charged with telling employees someone they've been exposed to tested positive. Too many calls not enough time in the day.
I work at a community mental health center in Iowa that's part of a regional healtcare system over several states. Last week I was put on a team of people tasked with opening a "mental health urgent care ". It will be next to our er and a huge triage tent that will eventually need to be used in the parking lot.
In November our board met for our strategic planning. The mental health urgent care was to be the crown jewel of our 5 year plan. We will be opening this in 6 days! The penny pinchers that usually ask for exhaustive studies and trial runs have told us money is no issue nor is staffing.
Typical hospital regulations and things like ADA are waived due to COVID-19. Our head of mental health is getting reports from large city hospitals that are refusing to see mental health patients who are suicidal/homicidal. They dont want to "waste beds". Hence us opening the urgent care.
Mid March I was in the group that thought this was over blown. Then was assigned to be on our hospitals COVID-19 preparedness response team and attended just one meeting. Between the meetings Ive attended for that and our mental health urgent care I am incredibly concerned.
Some of you get it, others not so much. But it's not the vrius that scares us in healthcare, its our healthcare infrastructure being overloaded. We aren't going to see these apocalyptic numbers some predict. But the numbers we see could have been prevented had our country had its shit together. Sorry for the rant, long day at work.