Originally Posted by
Ronald Blue
As for the ventilator shortage. It would seem there is enough blame to go around here but it's easy to blame the federal government for all the shortage. Obviously they have some in reserve which they are distributing. What about the hospitals? Medical supply companies? States? I know the military certainly would have some as well. I don't know how many ventilators are typically needed in a normal week without such a catastrophic event. How many are they supposed to have available? It's easy to have 20/20 hindsight. Sometimes the view out the windshield has a lot of bug splatter. I'm not sure that the combined response hasn't been excellent.
I can answer that.......
23 ventilator for a 320 bed hospital and 18 for a 280 bed hospital. That's what the hospital owns. During our busy season will typical rent 5-7 extra vents when we need them. These rental ventilators cost us about $300 a month EACH. It's just not possible to have on hand and store ventilators for something like this.
As soon as we got wind of the crisis we ordered as many vents as we could. All we got were 10 extra to cover both hospitals. That is all the rental company would give us because every other hospital needed vents also. Guess how many we've used now? 2 ventilators relating to the COVID19. My county has only had 2 positive patients hospitalized out of the 14 total we have had.
There's just no way of being prepared for something like this.
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