BOSTON — Tuesday morning Brigham and Women’s Hospital is responding to accusations that the hospital system defying a state order to delay elective surgeries. With covid cases rising, the Baker administration is requiring hospitals to cut back on the procedures to help free up hospital beds.
The hospital claims it is in compliance with the order. A spokesperson says its patients’ needs are at the forefront and they are closely monitoring how many beds they have available. But the nurses association sent a letter to the department of health claiming the hospital’s operating rooms remain busy as ever.
The union wrote that nonessential surgeries, like tummy tucks, were going on as scheduled while patients who needed surgery for emergencies were waiting for operating rooms. The letter also claimed almost every day the operating room starts without enough core staff, yet it continues to run at a high volume. As a result, the union says it’s negatively impacting the quality of patient care and burning out nursing staff.
We reached out to the hospital, and it released a statement saying in part:
“We are carefully balancing against the need to avoid contributing to the wave of patients that we are now seeing who require more intense care as a result of previously deferred care. We are also closely monitoring our patient volume and making decisions on a day-to-day basis that ensure we are doing everything possible to meet the needs of our community.”
The union has asked the Department of Public Health to investigate the hospital and make sure it is in compliance with the order---which as of Wednesday needs to reduce surgical volume by 50%.
Here is the full statement from Brigham and Women’s:
We are complying with the current DPH requirement and are planning to meet their updated mandate, which calls for a further reduction in non-essential, non-urgent scheduled procedures that require an inpatient stay as long as deferment will not cause long-term harm to patients.
Keeping our patients’ needs at the forefront of our decision-making, we are monitoring surgical cases and inpatient beds closely and deciding which cases can be safely rescheduled by using criteria that were developed with a multi-disciplinary group of experts, led by physicians and nurses. We are carefully balancing against the need to avoid contributing to the wave of patients that we are now seeing who require more intense care as a result of previously deferred care. We are also closely monitoring our patient volume and making decisions on a day-to-day basis that ensure we are doing everything possible to meet the needs of our community.
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