Broward Hospitals Near Capacity For Regular & ICU Beds As Miami-Dade Patients Travel North
BROWARD (CBSMiami) – Tuesday's numbers show Broward County hospitals are near capacity for regular and ICU beds.
But Memorial Healthcare System CEO Aurelio Fernandez says doctors will always create room to save lives.
"We have added beds and converted beds into what we call 'negative pressure rooms' to care for our critical care patients," Fernandez said.
Since Thursday, the county has hovered just under 1,300 people in the hospital.
Broward's dashboard Tuesday shows there's less than 20% of regular beds available and less than 10% of ICU adult beds are open.
With so many patients, staffing is a concern.
"The staff has been working at this now for five months and it gets to you. The stress levels are very high. We are very fortunate to be able to recruit over 200 traveling nurses," the CEO said.
It's common for two hospitals with Memorial Healthcare System to care for many patients across county line, who live in Miami-Dade near Broward.
The latest seven-day average shows about half of the patients at Memorial Hospital Miramar live in northwest Miami-Dade. More than 40% at Memorial Hospital West live across county-line. So, with the increase in patients from both counties, the CEO wants everyone to be safe.
"The residents of South Florida need to abide by CDC guidelines to avoid getting contaminated with the virus," he said.
That includes facial coverings, hand washing, along with keeping a distance from others and avoiding crowds. That's because there's still no cure and hospital workers say you may never know how sick you'll get.
"It takes a long period of time to get them off the ventilators and hopefully they can walk out of the institution but you're looking at two to three weeks worth of critical care," Fernandez said.
The main push from hospital leaders is to see a dominos effect. Once cases go down, then patients and ICU numbers fall, which then means fewer families planning funerals.
