DETROIT (WXYZ) — "He was hallucinating when I would get them in our bags were very purple down in the back part of the hand," said mom Christian Hall.
It was an RSV emergency for three-year-old David Hall, and when mom, Christian, and family arrived at Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital it quickly became clear the emergency was hospital-wide.
“So, you experienced first-hand that short staffing and the severity of the sickness that’s going around," said WXYZ's Glenda Lewis.
“Short beds, short rooms. They turn some of the rooms into pediatric rooms. It had to be at least around 20 different parents there with their babies and then they ran out of bed, so they were just sitting in regular chairs in the hallway," said Hall. "Nurses had to come to them."
“You know from our ICUs in Detroit and in the suburbs at the University of Michigan, at the DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, they have all been overwhelmed,” said Dr. Rudolph P. Valentini, Chief Medical Officer at Children’s Hospital of Michigan.
Healthcare leaders held a roundtable discussion about the economic staffing challenges facing Michigan hospitals, one of our greatest challenges in Detroit, and in other centers as well.
The state has lost upwards of 1,700 staff hospital beds since 2020, creating a ripple effect of problems for proper care, including longer wait times in ER, less services and difficulty transferring patients.
This at a time when COVID, flu, and RSV cases are at an all-time high.
"Do you feel better?" asked Glenda.
"Yeah," said David.
"As our tensions over treatment is oxygen levels had gotten down to 75. I was really worried I wanted to take them to Children’s, but they said Children’s was full,” said Hall.
“At the end of the day, whether you are a system with multiple hospitals or whether you are a rural, independent facility like Hillsdale, we need support right now from our elected officials. That is consistent across the board. There's no question about it,” said Brian Peters, Chief Executive Officer, Michigan Health & Hospital Association.
