The state is refusing to provide the city with 550 nurses to help take care of COVID-19 patients. The reason given was that it will have to use its own money (in other words, federal stimulus money) for paying for the nursing staff. Previously, the state had hired staffing companies to help hospitals stay on track with COVID-19 patients surges.
Local governments were told that they would have to come up with their own plans to increase hospital staffs before any state help could be given. Due to increased patient volume and the lack of employees, healthcare leaders are looking for a way to rapidly hire more medical staff in hospitals across Texas.
The number of COVID-19 related hospitalizations in Texas has increased by 250 percent since the beginning of the month. In San Antonio, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations has increased by 430 percent since the beginning of this year.“We have patients waiting in the lobby; we have patients in the hallway. Every nook and cranny in this organization has a patient,” declared the chief nurse executive of University Health, Tommye Austin.
When the hospitals in San Antonio needed more nurses, the state of Texas paid people to help staff the hospital. But they left in May and will no longer be paid to work there. With hospital staffing so strained, it’s not surprising that nurses are struggling to maintain their own health. Emergency rooms are once again full of people who need medical attention. Hospitals are once again overflowing with patients and say they need 550 new nurses to cope. Because nurses are the primary health-care providers in all hospitals, and they now suffer from unprecedented levels of exhaustion while simultaneously being asked to take on ever-greater amounts of responsibility
