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The state ignored San Antonio’s request for 550 nurses to help fill a shortage caused by an influx of COVID-19 patients, telling the city it will have to use its own federal stimulus money to pay for reinforcements.
The state had previously hired recruiting companies to send travel nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists to help hospitals cope with the influx of COVID-19 patients.
But in a letter sent Thursday to city and county leaders in Texas, the state called on local governments to develop their own plans to increase hospital staff before seeking help from the state.
This is a reversal from the previous approach, when the state spent an estimated $ 5.39 billion – which was reimbursed by the federal government – to hire recruiting companies to send thousands of contractors. to help hospitals cope with the influx of COVID-19 patients, according to state data.
The move has left health officials, hospital administrators and government officials in Texas scrambling to find a way to hire more medical staff quickly at a time when hospitals are struggling to retain employees and to monitor the volume of patients.
Since the beginning of July, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Texas has increased by 250%. In San Antonio, the situation is even more dramatic: hospitalizations related to COVID-19 have increased by 430%.
“We have patients waiting in the hall; we have patients in the hallway, ”said Tommye Austin, chief nurse for University Health, one of the largest hospitals in San Antonio. “Every corner of this organization has a patient.”
At the height of the pandemic, around 1,600 nurses and respiratory therapists were dispatched through state contracts to help hospitals in the San Antonio area. But the last reinforcements left in May.
Now, as the more infectious delta variant spreads in San Antonio, emergency rooms are filling again and hospitals say they need 550 more nurses to treat patients.
Exhausted nurses are again being asked to take more shifts. Hospitals compete for staff, as communities across the United States face similar staff shortages due to widespread burnout of medical providers strained by the pandemic.
“Gov. Abbott doesn’t think of any nurses, ”Austin said. “We’ve been in the trenches non-stop for over 16 months. “
Governor Greg Abbott has left little or no authority to cities, counties and school districts to fight the spread of COVID-19 and ensure people get vaccinated.
Abbott lifted the state’s mask mandate in March and the occupancy restrictions for businesses like restaurants, retailers and movie theaters. He has resisted calls to put them back in place and deprived mayors and county judges of the ability to enact theirs as the virus rages on again.
With the new school year on the horizon, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff called on Abbott this week to at least allow school districts to adopt their own mask mandates. . Children under 12 cannot be vaccinated, they noted. But Abbott held on.
Abbott has also made it clear that he has no plans to make vaccinations mandatory in Texas.
On Thursday, he issued an executive order upholding a previous executive order that prohibits local governments and any entity receiving public funds from requiring vaccinations in any capacity – at least until the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson vaccines & Johnson get final approval from US Food and Drug Administration. Currently, vaccines are approved under emergency authorization.
The state’s decision not to hire additional healthcare workers baffled Wolff, who didn’t see why the state should operate any differently from what it did in previous outbreaks. Using federal stimulus dollars to help pay medical staff isn’t ruled out, he said, but it’s unclear how much that would cost.
“There have been so many failures at the state level that it’s hard to list them,” Wolff said. “It’s one that’s totally unnecessary. I don’t know why they couldn’t do what they used to do because it’s 100 percent refundable.
Nirenberg declined to comment.
The state health department said San Antonio and Bexar County received more than $ 700 million in federal recovery dollars, which can be used to pay for medical personnel needed to take care of a wave of COVID-19 patients.
Seth Christensen, spokesperson for the Texas Emergency Management Division, said that “it is only when resources are depleted at the local level that we initiate and ask for state aid.”
He said the state also hoped to fix an issue that arose when the state provided medical staff on contract: some nurses quit their jobs in Texas hospitals to join recruiting companies offering higher salaries.
“How does the private sector health care system in Texas work on a day-to-day basis?” They face these fluctuations in staff, ”said Christensen. “And so we ask them to use the (federal) funding that has been made available to them to meet their staffing needs today.”
But the move sparked anxiety among healthcare providers statewide, especially those in rural communities who were struggling to attract nurses and doctors to their hospitals even before the pandemic.
In a letter sent this week, John Henderson, CEO of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals, urged Gov. Greg Abbott to “take immediate action to provide additional medical staff” to rural hospitals across the state.
Before the pandemic, many rural Texas hospitals were already experiencing financial crises, a situation caused by declining reimbursements from government insurers; rising operating costs; declining populations in rural communities; and a growing number of medical bills that patients cannot afford.
Then the pandemic struck. Henderson told the governor some of the hospitals were “precariously close to closure during the first wave.”
“Most of these hospitals did not fully recover financially from the first wave,” Henderson wrote. “Staffing is more difficult today because healthcare workers have been pushed to the limit of human performance, staff have been drawn to higher wages and others have chosen to leave or take. their retirement. “
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