The Briefing Room
State Chapters => NY/NJ => Topic started by: PeteS in CA on August 05, 2020, 07:37:49 pm
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New York's failure to use emergency hospitals is another reason to distrust government healthcare
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-yorks-failure-to-use-emergency-hospitals-is-another-reason-to-distrust-government-healthcare (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-yorks-failure-to-use-emergency-hospitals-is-another-reason-to-distrust-government-healthcare)
Recently, the New York Times provided plenty of fodder supporting the latter anxiety, revealing the results of a study it conducted that examined the disparities between public and private healthcare at the height of the pandemic in New York City. The disparities included staffing levels, differences in the age and type of equipment available, and access to drugs and experimental treatments. As one might guess, patients at the city's community facilities fared far worse than those in private facilities, with their mortality rate 3 times higher in some cases.
All hospitals saw higher staff-to-patient ratios than best practices would recommend. In a typical emergency room, that figure should look like 1 nurse for every 4 patients. But during COVID-19, private facilities experienced ratios closer to 1 nurse for every 6 to 7 patients. At the government hospitals, that number was 1 nurse for every 10 to 15, and at times even 20 patients.
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... The paper looked at the hospital set up at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to study why this occurred. Though the center was equipped with 470 beds and hundreds of employees (many of them out-of-state healthcare providers being paid handsomely), it ultimately saw only 79 patients and closed its doors after one month. It was a catastrophic failure, the kind only government can pull off.
I suspect that emergency facilities set up by the US Government and by Samaritan's Purse similarly were under-utilized due to the crony politics the article speaks of, but I would not expect the NYT to speak of facilities set up by the US Government (Because TRUMP!) or Franklin Graham.