Kern County medical facilities are being pushed to the limit as more and more residents purchase COVID-19.
During a press conference on Thursday, Kern Medical CEO Russell Judd said that all local hospitals have reached full capacity and were beginning to implement surge plans.
A state model predicted that the county would run out of staff and space to treat coronavirus patients in late July. With hospitals reaching capacity several times in the past few weeks, and with no signs that infections will diminish anytime soon, Kern officials have begun struggling to find new staff to work in intensive care units.
“What we thought was going to be in March or April is upon us in July and August,” Judd said, referring to early predictions that hospitals would exceed capacity last spring.
He later added that the number of patients with positive COVID continued to increase, taxing resources. “We know there are more patients, they are sicker patients, so we must be able to prepare for that greater number.”
In anticipation of even more residents needing medical care, the county plans to use federal CARES money to bring ICU nurses from across the country to allow local hospitals to serve ICUs beyond their authorized capacity. At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, the county plans to retroactively authorize a contract with a staffing agency to bring the nurses to Kern.
“There are not enough RNs living in Kern County to provide this level of care,” Judd said, then explained that traveling nurses were sometimes paid more than triple the normal salary. “However, we are ensuring this now in anticipation of the continued increase in the number of cases. We firmly believe that if we wait until the crisis hits and we get to the point where we have to have them now, there will be no nurses available. ”
Ambulance services are also being pushed to the limit. Public Health Services Director Matt Constantine reported that Hall Ambulance was experiencing a record number of calls, causing them to struggle with the increased workload. He added that the company had reportedly driven more than 1,000 COVID positive individuals or individuals suspected of being COVID positive.
So many ambulances have been needed recently that some of Hall’s leadership team, who are paramedics or EMS technicians, have been behind the wheel on certain shifts to help with staff.
Mark Corum, director of Hall’s media services, said Hall had subcontracted to Ridgecrest’s Liberty Ambulances to cover the California city region at Hall. This will allow the company to divert more ambulances to the Bakersfield area.
Still, Hall requested two state “strike teams” to bolster the company’s service. The teams, consisting of five ambulances each, will be in Bakersfield over the weekend.
“Everyone at Hall Ambulance is giving 200 percent, but it has increased to the point where we feel compelled to be proactive and say hey we need to get extra help,” Corum said of the strike teams.
He added that delays in local emergency rooms meant that ambulance teams sometimes waited up to four hours to drop off a patient, and local hospitals had overburdened the company with inter-facility transfers to locations outside of Bakersfield.
“A tremendous burden has been created because you only have a finite number of paramedics and EMS technicians that you can include on the schedule,” he said.
Hall is working with the county to create a plan where some patients can be left in urgent care settings rather than emergency rooms, which will alleviate overcrowding, he continued.
“This would help reduce the burden of emergency overcrowding, decrease our time on task and allow more ambulances to be available to respond,” he wrote in an email.
The increase in daily reported cases comes as the United States Representative, Kevin McCarthy, has worked to secure additional evidence resources for the county. On Wednesday, McCarthy announced that the US Department of Health and Human Services had approved the surge testing capability in Bakersfield.
That could allow up to 60,000 people to be evaluated quickly, Constantine said during the meeting. The county plans to announce up to three new test sites to accommodate federal government action.
The new sites would come with the ability to analyze test samples in their own laboratory, Constantine said, with a response time that should not exceed 48 hours.
You can contact Sam Morgen at 661-395-7415. You can also follow him on Twitter @smorgenTBC.
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