CNF published a story a few days ago with Cumberland County Death Investigator Ben Gibson’s narrative on visiting the CMC ER.  Now I have first-hand knowledge of the current situation at the ER.  My wife’s doctor called me on Thursday afternoon and told me, based on her blood test the previous day, to get her to the ER immediately.  The doctor said she had a critically elevated D-Dimer level in her blood indicating a possible blood clot had formed in her. I told the doctor the ER was not someplace anyone should go right now due to the incredible wait time for seeing a physician. Nevertheless, the doctor said ‘GO’ now. No doubt her doctor knew the long wait time but wanted my wife to be at the ER in case complications arose suddenly.

I took the wife to the ER and right away she was taken into triage for evaluation.  Her vitals were normal and she had no current symptoms of a clot prior to us arriving.  We were only there on the orders of her doctor to get a chest scan in case the blood tests were actually indicative of a clot.  We were sent back out to the waiting area until one of the three ER doctors could see her.  There were only about four others in the entire waiting area at our arrival – so I thought we would get in pretty soon to see a doctor.  It turned out to be a ten-hour wait for us.

The longer we waited the more frustrated I became.  After all, the ER was not full in the waiting area.  During our ten-hour wait, I learned a lot on why our hospital is stressed to the max.   There are 21 ER examining rooms.  All 21 rooms were occupied by patients but not all were ER patients any longer  – some of them were actually admitted to the hospital.  Why weren’t those patients sent upstairs to hospital rooms?  Unfortunately, there were no rooms available upstairs.  All were filled. At least all were filled that had staff available.   Therefore, if the ER patients were admitted to the hospital they had to stay in the ER exam rooms.  The problem wasn’t that they were being overflowed with patients (although they do have many more than normal these days due to COVID-19) the problem was inadequate staffing available upstairs.  There are 189 in-patient beds at Cumberland Medical Center.  But there is only enough staff for a fraction of the beds.  There are 12 ICU beds and all are currently filled.   There is a multitude of reasons for being understaffed. Many are out sick, many quarantined at home, and some have taken other jobs at other hospitals because of some kind of sign-on bonus being offered to them to come to their hospital.  That seemed a bit unethical to me.  Other hospitals ‘luring’ nurses and other staff away from hospitals who desperately need them. And, apparently, there is not a long line of qualified applicants waiting to be hired.

With hardly any staff to work – the hospital is being forced to keep many patients in the ER even after being admitted. This is stressing the facility greatly. We were told we could wait in our car if we wanted to and they would call us when our time came to see the doctor.  While we waited, there were four to five ambulances that arrived with patients, some critical others not.  There is a room reserved in the ER for critical patients.  Once we finally got to go back to the ER examining area – my wife was put on a bed in the hallway along with about five other patients lining the hallway.  All the ER rooms were filled.

The only good thing about waiting to see an ER attending physician was the incredible hospitality given to us by the attendants in the waiting area. Once we were back in the ER examining area – the same incredible, cordial and professional service was given by the few who were working there.  There were three doctors and about 5 other nurses and workers trying to tend to 26 or so patients in the ER.  The COVID-19 patients were in rooms secluded from the ones in the hallway.  Everyone had masks on. Due to the extreme care taken by all the staff, we never felt vulnerable to COVID-19.

I was told this was a ‘light’ night for the volume of patients in the ER.  The line of beds in the hallway reminded me of those movies where a disaster has hit a town and the ER is swamped with patients.   This hospital is in dire-straits with the onslaught of COVID-19 patients along with the normal flow of ER patients added on top of reduced staff.  Some hospitals are on ‘diversion’ which means they will not take patients from other counties.  I could not ascertain if CMC was on diversion or not.  I do commend CMC for its effort to serve the huge number of patients during these very difficult times.

My advice: Do not go to the ER unless it is a critical, life-threatening issue – you will be there awhile.  The staff is working overtime to try and help patients and through it all are keeping their cool and treating each one exceptionally well under the circumstances.  Fortunately, no clots showed up in my wife’s chest CT scan and she did not need to be admitted. But it was a learning experience indeed.  Hopefully, the COVID-19 vaccine will cause the cases to go down in a few months and the world can get back to normal.  As a side note: I referred to the Emergency Room often in this report.  However, currently, it is called the Emergency Department or ED.  Some habits are hard to break.