The new normal for Washington state hospitals is living with massive waves of new COVID-19 virus variations every few months, respiratory and flu outbreaks, long waits in our emergency rooms and clinics, financial difficulties, challenges recruiting and retaining staff, and availability of acute-care beds and post-care beds in nursing homes and other care facilities. The new normal has only served to exacerbate all of these challenges.
The new normal for Washington state hospitals is living with massive waves of new COVID-19 virus variations every few months, respiratory and flu outbreaks, long waits in our emergency rooms and clinics, financial difficulties, challenges recruiting and retaining staff, and availability of acute-care beds and post-care beds in nursing homes and other care facilities. The new normal has only served to exacerbate all of these challenges.
parent, you feel that something s wrong, you should, you know, give your primary care clinic a call, a local nurse line and seek some guidance. all right. so frightening. any parent new parent with a baby, i ve been there where you re counting the breathing to are a minute. it s really frightening. what are you doing at the hospital to try to manage this overwhelming flood of patients who are coming in with severe are cases while you re dealing with staffing shortages? as expected, our staff is working very hard, long hours. we have increased capacity in our out-patient clinics, our walk-in clinics. we ve set up adjacent fast-track areas next to our emergency departments to try to accommodate this unusual surge in patients. we ve also stood up a rapid improvement team where multi-disciplinary group of