Plan B if things go down the drain?

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A locums company just had the gall to tell me hospital budgets are tight right now.
I was like, they are paying nurses three times their regular rate.
ROFL
 
miacomet said:
A locums company just had the gall to tell me hospital budgets are tight right now.
I was like, they are paying nurses three times their regular rate.
ROFL
Click to expand...
I honestly don't know how hospitals get through this. They're getting hit from all sides. Attendings, nurses, and support staff are all dropping out/getting sick and locums are demanding multiple times the usual rate to replace them. They need lots of equipment that will never pay itself back and everything is selling for insane prices ($3-$15 for 30 cent N95s!). Meanwhile the elective procedures that are usually their biggest profit margins are just not getting done.

How long can they pay the bills like that?
 
Perrotfish said:
I honestly don't know how hospitals get through this. They're getting hit from all sides. Attendings, nurses, and support staff are all dropping out/getting sick and locums are demanding multiple times the usual rate to replace them. They need lots of equipment that will never pay itself back and everything is selling for insane prices ($3-$15 for 30 cent N95s!). Meanwhile the elective procedures that are usually their biggest profit margins are just not getting done.

How long can they pay the bills like that?
Click to expand...

Agreed. Also, not my problem. A bigger concern is how we all get through this safely.
They have no problem paying nurses more. Why are we so unimportant?
 
Perrotfish said:
I honestly don't know how hospitals get through this. They're getting hit from all sides.

How long can they pay the bills like that?
Click to expand...

Maybe they could... Cut administrative bloat and cronyism?

How many admins to a doc? What's that oft-quoted ratio? 8:1?
 
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Perrotfish said:
I honestly don't know how hospitals get through this. They're getting hit from all sides. Attendings, nurses, and support staff are all dropping out/getting sick and locums are demanding multiple times the usual rate to replace them. They need lots of equipment that will never pay itself back and everything is selling for insane prices ($3-$15 for 30 cent N95s!). Meanwhile the elective procedures that are usually their biggest profit margins are just not getting done.

How long can they pay the bills like that?
Click to expand...

They have not for profit status, therefore tax burden is almost nothing. They have site of service differentials, meaning If I do a procedure on my patient in the hospital, the hospital charges $3000 for the facility fee. If I personally do the same procedure on the same patient in my clinic, I get paid a grand total of $250. And, I have to pay taxes.

My local hospital is sitting on over $500,000,000 in cash in the bank.
 
Another physician bites the dust. Some Ortho doc died yesterday in my area.

Young people intubated left and right. 32 year old in our icu right now. 33 yo just died yesterday without any comorbidities.
 
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GeneralVeers said:
OMG time to panic cuz "anecdotes!"
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Yeah i know they are anecdotes, but the 33 year old was a nurse that almost all of my nurses knew. And they were devastated when they found out.

Young people are not immune is all I'm saying.

Edit: i just opened my Facebook. Lots of posts regarding this nurse. Turns out i knew her and had worked with her on one of my rotations in residency.
 
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cyanide12345678 said:
Another physician bites the dust. Some Ortho doc died yesterday in my area.

Young people intubated left and right. 32 year old in our icu right now. 33 yo just died yesterday without any comorbidities.
Click to expand...

Are these 30 year olds in good shape, or fat? Seems like obesity is a comorbitdity in its own right for this thing. Also smoking/vaping?
 
I think that at this point the virus is endemic to most parts of the country. Too late to really stop it. Why TSA keeps showing up to work, though, is a mystery to me.
 
miacomet said:
I think that at this point the virus is endemic to most parts of the country. Too late to really stop it. Why TSA keeps showing up to work, though, is a mystery to me.
Click to expand...

Right. Any quarantine measures are too late. Last night I admitted 2 with it (one 80 yo, the other 58 with asthma) and sent 5 relatively healthy young people home.
 
Birdstrike said:
Will there ever be a time your group will say, "We don't need you?"
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Well, an unnamed CMG told us they are cutting our coverage effective immediately due to the surge. So now instead of 12 hour shifts, they're 10s. 15% pay cut right there.
And then, not 24 hours later, they group email us telling us they're desperate to staff hospitals in another region.

Well guess what guys? Probably shouldn't have cut our hours without thinking this through. You need me WAY more than I need you.


Sadly, as more and more primary care docs are out of jobs, and more ER docs get sick, I feel that the ER spots will be taken by non boarded folk.
 
Staffing agencies are offering nurses well over $100 an hour, insurance, and sick pay if they are quarantined.

Then they tell us it's our "duty" and the hospitals don't have money.
 
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