Even amid signs that this winter’s omicron-fueled wave may be starting to crest in California, the situation at hospitals like Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa is worsening.
Patients are sometimes waiting a day or two to be admitted and get a bed. Nursing homes are rebuffing the hospital’s requests to transfer recovering patients, saying they are short-staffed themselves because of the coronavirus. Across the Sharp health system, one of the largest in San Diego County, more than 1,000 health workers are now unable to work because of coronavirus-related reasons.
At Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, registered nurse Sandra Beltran said short staffing has led patients treated in the emergency room to sometimes wait 20 or 30 hours for a bed elsewhere in the hospital. That has a domino effect on the ER, where waits grow longer and staff have had to find new ways to assess patients.
