“Patients are leaving early or dying waiting” in emergency departments, one expert said. Overwhelmed staff have reached a breaking point.
NBC NEWS
As emergency room doctors nationwide plead for help to ease patient overcrowding, the one federal program that could fix the crisis is poised to lose funding.
Across the U.S., ER patients who need to be hospitalized find themselves stuck in hallways or waiting rooms, sometimes for days or weeks, before they are able to get further care.
Marissa Long, 30, spent three days and four nights on a gurney in a busy Los Angeles ER hallway last March, separated from other sick patients just a few feet away by a thin fabric curtain.
Long, a heart transplant recipient, was showing signs of possible organ rejection: trouble breathing and falling blood pressure. She needed to be admitted to the hospital, but there were no beds available.
“People were coughing and vomiting,” Long said. “I already have a low immune system. I was scared to get sick.”
Last summer in Bangor, Maine, Michael Day had heard of ER hallways full of sick patients, hacking and sneezing; people left sitting for days on hard, plastic waiting room chairs.
He did not want to go to the emergency room, although the 75-year-old had no choice. Following a diagnosis of advanced esophageal cancer, he was rapidly declining. He was weak and jaundiced. His blood pressure was plummeting.
With no available room in the hospital, Day found himself stuck in the ER, twice.
On one visit, Day developed a bed sore from remaining stationary for more than 26 hours. During another, the ER staff started him on an IV to replenish his fluids and hooked him up to a blood pressure monitor while he waited to be seen by a doctor.
Once again, hours ticked by.
Day’s wife, Kathy — a former ER nurse — said they were there so long that the batteries in her husband’s blood pressure monitor eventually died. His IV ran out and dried up. The staff on duty, Kathy Day said, did not notice.
At that moment, Kathy Day uttered the sentiment echoed by countless ER patients across the country: “This is bulls—.”
