Hospital system overwhelmed

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think we need a term for all the unvaccinated COVID patients taking up hospital beds, because the phrase ‘unvaccinated COVID patients taking up hospital beds’ is kind of clumsy.

I propose we start calling them ‘Vickies’.

Boru

[Spongebob]

There's always the possibility of a surge in patients from some unexpected disease or catastrophe.

You want hospitals built, staffed, and funded to be able to accomadate what if scenarios?

If you think about the nature of healthcare, does it make sense to have a system that is always near its capacity even when there is no outbreak of a new disease?  That means if there is anything whatsoever, your system will break.  Does that make sense?

When schools reach capacity or go a little beyond capacity, the typical reaction is to build a new school or at least expand an existing school.  In a growing region, the student body will continue to grow.  So its that or line kids up on the sidewalk.  I don't see why hospitals should be any different.  Of course there is one mitigating factor, the availability of medical staff.  If that supply is restricted, then new beds are of no use.

[The Grand Nudger]

We can staff more hospitals than we have, and quickly, just not profitably.

IMO, yeah, we should have capacity for some what if scenarios - that's when we'd need it the most with the least ability to construct it on the spot. It may cost a bit extra year over year - but is that additional cost more or less the cost of...say covid? The dollar amount of money lost or saved or made can't be determined by the tiny fraction of whatever it cost to save a life, as wealth and productivity compound generationally and exponentially. If you save one life at a cost of a million dollars, very quickly, that one life has made many others and advantaged many others and their combined productivity dwarfs the cost of the medical bills that (at least in present) represent a death sentence. Even very poor peoples individual productivity is greater than the savings we might clinch by letting them die. It's a no brainer, and that's why we do have such systems to save those lives in place, even if they're insufficient. Why we do have some non profit hosptials with capacity that exceeds community ability to pay for or support them in any given moment. Why we subsidize healthcare.

Ultimately, though, if life itself is for profit, none of that matters. We can contextualize our state of affairs as silently and implicitly accepting that only the most productive individual lives at the moment of their sickness get to be saved, regardless of how much they made before, or will amount to after. Check your bank accounts today - do you deserve to live?

[brewer]

You want hospitals built, staffed, and funded to be able to accommodate what if scenarios?

If you think about the nature of healthcare, does it make sense to have a system that is always near its capacity even when there is no outbreak of a new disease?  That means if there is anything whatsoever, your system will break.  Does that make sense?

When schools reach capacity or go a little beyond capacity, the typical reaction is to build a new school or at least expand an existing school.  In a growing region, the student body will continue to grow.  So its that or line kids up on the sidewalk.  I don't see why hospitals should be any different.  Of course there is one mitigating factor, the availability of medical staff.  If that supply is restricted, then new beds are of no use.

Yes, but maybe you don't know what the average working capacity is normally: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1859...ince-2001/

Population increase is predictable and relatively static, unforeseen disease or disaster is not. The school comparison is not valid.

[Astreja]

The bottom line: It seems that governments and for-profit health care corporations love to pay for managers and hate to pay for nurses.

[onlinebiker]

I think we need a term for all the unvaccinated COVID patients taking up hospital beds, because the phrase ‘unvaccinated COVID patients taking up hospital beds’ is kind of clumsy.

I propose we start calling them ‘Vickies’.

Boru

"Morons" has a nice ring to it....

[brewer]

The bottom line:  It seems that governments and for-profit health care corporations love to pay for managers and hate to pay for nurses.

Can't that be said for most/all of corporate america?

[The Grand Nudger]

Population increase is predictable and relatively static, unforeseen disease or disaster is not. 

So are hypothetical what if cases, and the metrics by which we judge our capacity.  We know, because of our for-profit fun, how many people can get sick in a given area before the hospitals start calling other hospitals looking for beds.  So, say we posited that a sudden 10% uptick in bed residency happens, what will that cost in that momnent, to rapidly deploy that additional capacity?  That's a knowable number.
If the cost of maintaining even a fraction of that ten percent every day (as a buffer against such an eventuality) is less than the cost of rapidly constructing 10% of identical capacity.....well. Now, another fun number, how often do we see those upticks? Historic data exists. Things aren't "unforeseen" so much as "unscheduled".

All of this is to point out that the reason we don't do that (or do it to a greater extent) isn't that there's just no way to know or plan. There is, and we do. Planning and doing those things would (and does) impact quarterlies at present, though - and that's really all there is to it in a life for profit model.

[brewer]

Population increase is predictable and relatively static, unforeseen disease or disaster is not. 

So are hypothetical what if cases, and the metrics by which we judge our capacity.  We know, because of our for-profit fun, how many people can get sick in a given area before the hospitals start calling other hospitals looking for beds.  So, say we posited that a sudden 10% uptick in bed residency happens, what will that cost in that momnent, to rapidly deploy that additional capacity?  That's a knowable number.
If the cost of maintaining even a fraction of that ten percent every day (as a buffer against such an eventuality) is less than the cost of rapidly constructing 10% of identical capacity.....well.  Now, another fun number, how often do we see those upticks?  Historic data exists.  Things aren't "unforeseen" so much as "unscheduled".

All of this is to point out that the reason we don't do that (or do it to a greater extent) isn't that there's just no way to know or plan.  There is, and we do.  Planning and doing those things would (and does) impact quarterlies at present, though - and that's really all there is to it.

Did you fail to look at the historical hospital capacity numbers?

[Spongebob]

Yes, but maybe you don't know what the average working capacity is normally: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1859...ince-2001/

That's a good graphic; I hadn't seen that.  But then it doesn't mean that data is super accurate.  For one thing its a national based graphic.  Who knows what the data looks like locally and that's what really matters.  We don't normally ship patients from Macon, GA to Pensacola, FL just because there's capacity available.  When local events happen, like floods, earthquakes, fires, traffic pileups, mass shootings, even flu...you name it, the local hospitals often get overwhelmed.  We've seen covid cause this in numerous regions because its happening everywhere.

Population increase is predictable and relatively static, unforeseen disease or disaster is not. The school comparison is not valid.

I didn't say it was a perfect comparison, just a comparison.  The point is we, as a community, see school overcrowding as a negative thing so we react by providing more capacity.  Why don't we do the same with the medical systems.  I think Nudger is making a good point, if the medical industry is profit driven then it will be designed to maximize profits and little else.  I think all the hospitals in my area are for profit and I know they are often extremely busy because I know people who have had to wait weeks for serious procedures due to lack of the available slots in the OR.  As I said, this could have more to do with limited medical personnel than beds.

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All of this is to point out that the reason we don't do that (or do it to a greater extent) isn't that there's just no way to know or plan.  There is, and we do.  Planning and doing those things would (and does) impact quarterlies at present, though - and that's really all there is to it in a life for profit model.