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Turned Away, but Not for Covid
Here’s a shocking headline from yesterday: Austin family says toddler was turned away from hospital due to lack of space in pediatric ICU. Oh, my gawd! A critically ill child was “turned away” from a hospital That’s not only illegal, but also pretty stupid. Let’s read more:
After a brief scare in a local pediatric intensive care unit, an Austin couple is sharing their message: get vaccinated and wear a mask.
So their kid got the Wuhan Virus? That’s awful.
Kevin Karaffa, whose 22-month-old daughter was recently diagnosed with the viral respiratory infection, claims he was turned away from an Austin-area hospital because there was no space. Luckily, he says his family received one of the last beds in the Dell Children’s PICU.
That’s odd, no mention of the Wuhan Virus. You’d think that would be the lede. Also, it seems that the child was not “turned away,” but transferred. What type of hospital did the child go to first? Did that facility have any pediatric ICU beds? Maybe they’ll mention that later. Also, since the author doesn’t bother defining the acronyms, I will. ICU means Intensive Care Unit. PICU means Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.
Three hours later, Karaffa says a 10-month-old took the final PICU bed next door. He says a Dell Children’s nurse informed them that there were no more available PICU beds in the area.
“My daughter responded well to treatment, so they sent us to the recovery floor this morning since Dell Children’s needed the ICU bed so badly,” Karaffa said. “This is scary and I think Austinites ought to know that, just like Dallas’ Judge Jenkins said: if your child needs critical care, [they] will have to wait for another child to get better or die before a PICU bed will be available in Travis County.”
No, the hospital transferred them to the recovery floor, because the child had recovered. Patients are not kept in an ICU bed once they no longer need ICU services. Why? ICUs use a tremendous amount of resources, both in equipment and staff; as a result, they are several times more expensive than regular hospital rooms.
KXAN has reached out to all of the local hospital systems to get an update on capacity for ICU beds for both children and adults. We have not heard back yet. This story will be updated to reflect the response.
It’s odd that a staff nurse on a unit knows the ICU bed availability, but a reporter can’t find that out. Maybe he should have talked to the nurse.
On Monday, Amanda Norwood, the medical director for the Williamson County & Cities Health District told the Leander Independent School District that there was only one remaining PICU for the entire 11-county trauma service area.
One remaining PICU? Ok, how many beds? Also, that’s Williamson County, not Travis County, where this event occurred.
Other healthcare and urgent care providers are also under high strain. A glimpse online shows that the Texas MedClinic in Round Rock is currently experiencing walk-in wait times of more than five hours.
“We are currently seeing a high volume of patients due to the recent spike of COVID-19 in our communities, which is causing longer than normal wait times to see a provider,” a Texas MedClinic message reads. “Our teams are doing their best to treat every patient well.”
What does this have to do with the rest of the story? Texas MedClinic is a stand-alone walk-in urgent care facility that does not specialize in pediatrics, is not associated with a hospital, and does not have an ICU. Why didn’t the reporter call a pediatric hospital and see the wait time in their emergency rooms?
Karaffa said he wants to share his story because his daughter, whose illness was not COVID-related, almost didn’t receive the treatment she needed due to lack of hospital space. He said if everyone who is eligible receives their vaccination, it might help alleviate capacity issues in the area.
“Everyone is so entrenched in their belief until it is their own child that it almost put our daughter at risk,” Karaffa said.
“Not COVID-related.” So this has nothing to do with the Wuhan Virus. Vaccines and face diapers would have done nothing to protect the patient. The whole story is just authoritarian scare-mongering propaganda. How many of the patients in the PICU had the Wuhan Virus? We don’t know. You’d think that would be important.
The father is not a medical professional, obviously. Having a sick child does not make you an expert in health care. The only medical professional that the reporter said that he talked to was not identified and had no apparent pediatrics or ICU expertise.
My wife used to work in the float pool for nurses at Dell Children’s. She was often sent to the PICU. I asked her how many PICU beds were usually available in “normal” times. She replied that “There was usually one admission bed, but sometimes not. here is never more than two PICU beds available, ever. Staffing critical care units is always a juggle, it has been in my thirty-six years as a nurse.”
You all know from my previous posts that I’m pro-vaccine. But if you don’t get the vaccine, you are only harming yourself. And biased advocacy in the guise of reporting is not going to convince anyone.
I have reached out to the reporter with the questions I brought up in this post. I have not heard back yet. This post will be updated to reflect the response.
Published in Healthcare
Too bad the reporter didn’t check out and verify the information he received before he went public . . . nah.
The world could use a couple thousand JosePluma’s working full-time to expose the stupid in news stories like this. Maybe more.
That father might not be a medical professional, but he sure has an agenda! He even name-checks that zeolot judge in Dallas.
It’s an unfortunate but understandable fact of life that all businesses, including hospitals, are better off financially if they normally operate at or near capacity.
One way of helping deal with this reality is if states/counties/cities/etc, even the feds, take over “obsolete” hospital facilities and “mothball” them for later use if needed. Rather than tearing down the buildings to put up new “low-income” (what a joke THAT is!) apartments or what-not. I read about one such facility when I was living in Phoenix, and that turned out to be good thing on a couple occasions.
That’s a tell right there that the whole thing is bogus.
At the link, the second paragraph has now changed, from “the” viral respiratory infection to “a” viral respiratory infection.
Which is important since they later say “his daughter, whose illness was not COVID-related” . . .
Deceptive second paragraph, deceit confirmed later in the story. But now edited to hide the initial deceit.
Good eye. Thanks.
COVID is making everyone act crazy . . .
This is what I see and I will stand with my view that getting the vaccine is an individual choice with no negative effects resulting beyond those that befall the individual making the choice. When I get facts that rebut this position, I will reconsider
The reporter gets a pat on the back for a story like this.
Holy Cow! The UT Football News has a report with actual facts:
The word “surge” is not allowed during the Biden Regime.
Unless it’s something that can be blamed on Trump.
But forgive my ignorance here. Since children aren’t eligible for the vaccine and presumably PICU beds are pretty much reserved for children presumably from the “P” designation. How does not getting vaccinated contribute to a shortage of PICU beds? Especially since for most children Covid is not a particularly serious diagnosis at least as far as the data that has been reported would appear to indicate. Confused.
Almost nobody is old enough to have been in Moscow as it fell to the Reds. I’ll bet there was a lot of misinformation, distortions and frightened illusions at the time, probably as much as now. But today, unlike then, there are enough good guys to fix it just sitting there, at most complaining. They pacify themselves saying we’ll win the next election and fix it. What is the likelihood that the election will lead to a change of parties?
My guess is, you meant this for a different thread.
If the Democrats get their way with their Ballot Control Law, then the likelihood is ZERO.
I have been appalled at the number of “news” reports that convey panic that hospitals and/or hospital ICUs are near or at capacity with no apparent understanding on the part of the “reporter” that hospitals financially need to operate near capacity. Too many of these “reporters” seem to think hospitals sit mostly empty most of the time.
Earlier I read panicked “news” articles about “ICU running out of room; operating at 95% capacity!!!!” Articles that gave no indication that “normal” steady state operations was 80-85% occupancy, so that the differential wasn’t that big a number. And I understand that because of patient ICU stays that are less than 24 hours it is not unusual during flu season for some ICUs to operate at over 100% occupancy.
One large pileup on the Interstate can swamp ICUs for miles around.
Maintaining things, whether they are ICU beds or fire stations, costs money. It’s a trade-off between how many you estimate you need vs. projected casualties.
My best guess is that the child has RSV. RSV has been raging in our area of Texas. Some have opined that the RSV spike is due, in part, to illegal border crossings. I have seen no data to substantiate this opinion. Others have opined that RSV is bad now because it was held at bay with all the COVID-19 precautions (masks, distancing) and as people have gotten vaccinated and ditched the masks and congregated again, RSV is on the move, even though it is out of season. I just don’t know. Regardless, 58,000 hospitalizations per year are caused by RSV and up to 500 child deaths per year are due to RSV per the CDC.