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Comment by NikolaeVarius | Hacker News Reader

I dont think measuring hospital capacity by available beds by themselves is useful. Both parents are doctors and work in different hospitals. Both report a shortage of doctors and nurses and not enough ability to give care to all their patients due to simply not having enough time in the day.

You can have 20% free beds, but only 50% care capacity

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That's an interesting point. I created a visualization of the number of hospitals reporting a "critical staff shortage" using the data provided on HealthData.gov. It looks like the number of hospitals reporting a critical staff shortage has been consistently around 10-15% since July of 2020.

https://healthdata.gov/Hospital/Copy-of-of-hospitals-reporti...

Do you think things could be less than ideal before a facility reports a "critical staff shortage"?

And those medical staff being the last line, with, as the article says "no one to take over if I need to tap out".

Collapse comes all at once, unexpectedly. Except for all the warning signs...

I've noticed this idea bothers some people, but I really think we need some sort of deputized health-care worker system set up.

Allow people to take a six-week course, that lets them do simple patient care and vitals testing, and removes as much rote-work from the actual professionals as possible. While I greatly respect the work that nurses do, I think that a large part of their labor each day is spent on simple tasks.

I think the legal and regulatory landscape is far too complex and rigid to let that happen, though.

Most hospitals have been having back office folks re deploy to do the drudgery for months now. Lots of stuff like stocking rooms, bed setup etc. Ohio has now drafted national gaurd units to help in our hospitals to pick up this slack as well. None of these folks can do direct patient care stuff like blood pressure etc but they can and do pick up nearly everything else.

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