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US Pandemic related medical resource shortages
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[QUOTE="gleem, post: 6423693, member: 298988"] Here is a [URL='https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/']study of ICU bed occupancy[/URL] from 2005 to 2017. This study concerns itself with the adequacy of ICU capacity for disasters. My take is it probably looking at regional disaster situations due to airplane crashes, industrial explosions, extreme weather, or terrorist attacks and not a pandemic. ICU units are very expensive to build/equip and staff so one does not wish to have an oversupply. The study notes that there were about 66,000 ICU beds in the US and at anyone time, about 66% were in use with a third of these are on ventilators. Thus about 22,000 were available on average suggesting adequate surge capacity. It was noted that this excess in occupancy is greater than the total ICU beds in many developed countries ( however, the US is the third most populous country behind China and India). The study also recognizes that all though the gross statistics indicate the adequacy of the number of ICU beds there are problems. The study found unexpected issues for example small ICUs (rural hospitals) typically had higher occupancy than larger facilities. Thus the current problem we are seeing in the lesser populated regions. If you are a person with medical issues it behooves you to stay close to larger metropolitan areas or places with medical schools. Typically rural hospitals are not equipped to handle unusual cases and sometimes even relatively common situations as blood in urine cannot be handled since the medical expertise is not routinely available. They will treat the symptoms or stabilize the patient and transfer or refer them to larger nearby facilities. In recent decades with increased competition and the consolidation of health care facilities into regional networks with the desire to reduce costs and increase efficiency, redundancy is not something that is desired. Additionally, hospitals are always trying to reduce the total bed count to reduce surplus beds since they cost money to maintain. Thus the explosion of one-day surgery procedures. My wife had a knee replacement and was in the hospital for less than 24 hours. Fewer beds less staff needed for more "routine" procedures. We are less prepared for rare events as pandemics. COVID must provide the impetus to devise a new paradigm for addressing the impact of potential pandemics. We cannot wait to see how bad it will get before decisive action is taken. [/QUOTE]
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