Investment in staffing, and in existing staff (retention) is the only way forward.
Vice Chair & Professor of Medicine, UNC | Balanced healthcare perspectives
Inpatient care is in a state of emergency. I recently caught up with a doctor friend of mine who runs a hospitalist program at a large West Coast AMC. He’s even-keeled and certainly not one to catastrophize. But when discussing inpatient care, he pulled no punches, explaining, “It’s absolute chaos. At least during COVID, we had a mission.” Why? The work is harder than ever. Patients are sicker and have more complex needs than ever before. Yet there aren’t enough healthcare workers – especially bedside nurses and care coordinators – to care for them. And unless patients can be discharged home, there’s often nowhere to send them. Under-staffed skilled nursing facilities are also full. Consequently, care is happening in slow motion. Patients without close advocates (family/friends) literally get lost in the shuffle. Even those with advocates can spend days in the emergency department awaiting a bed. Unfortunately, this is becoming the national norm. We can't ignore it. When I asked my hospitalist friend how he’d try to fix these problems, he said he’d invest all available capital in staffing. And zero dollars into more tech. #healthcareworkers #healthcareheroes #healthcareonlinkedin
