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(FOX 9) – As more hospital intensive care beds fill up on the metro, this is having a ripple effect on patient care in rural hospitals.
Rural health workers say they scramble to get intensive care patients the help they need fairly quickly because the resources just aren’t there.
Critical Care Bed Shortage, Staff Ripple From Twin Cities to Rural Minnesota
A shortage of intensive care beds and medical staff is creating a ripple effect from the Twin Cities to rural Minnesota.
“Rural hospitals are designed for primary care and general surgery. They are not designed for intensive care,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association.
Morgan said there’s one thing rural hospitals across the country have in common: the ability to transfer patients to large city hospitals.
He says rural hospitals have historically lagged behind in adequate resources such as beds and staff, but the recent increase in the number of Delta variant patients is making matters worse.
An internal medicine doctor (who asked to hide his identity for patient privacy) said rural hospital staff requesting beds were being refused.
“We have this thing called the C4 in Minnesota: a system to try to get intensive care beds in these rural places in an organized fashion, and last night they just stopped taking calls because they were so full. . They had no beds, “the doctor said.
For other intensive care doctors across the state, not getting to patients on time has been devastating.
“The hard part is knowing that there are patients we can help and they are waiting in emergency rooms in small hospitals and cannot get the critical care they need.” said Dr Christina Bastin de Jong, who works inside. Essentia Health Intensive Care Unit at St. Mary’s in Duluth.
The National Rural Health Association says the next big push is to hire more staff and encourage more people in rural communities to get vaccinated.
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