ST. LOUIS 鈥 The federal government has declined to fill emergency staffing requests for all but one area hospital, officials said on Friday, leaving facilities strapped for workers amid this winter鈥檚 surge in COVID-19 patients.
Eleven of the region鈥檚 hospitals asked for emergency aid last week. But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told area officials that it could only send help now to one, BJC Healthcare鈥檚 Christian Hospital, in north 狐狸视频 County, the 狐狸视频 Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said Friday.
Christian will get a 44-person team, scheduled to arrive Wednesday and stay for 30 days. The team, from the U.S. Navy, will include doctors and registered nurses, the task force said.
鈥淲e definitely need all the help we can get right now,鈥 said Rick Stevens, president at Christian, adding that roughly 100 of the hospital鈥檚 1,800 employees were out on Friday.
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Like other medical providers across the region, the hospital has struggled as many workers stay home sick, in quarantine after exposure to the virus or to care for loved ones who are ill.
On Nov. 23, there were more than 300 confirmed COVID-19 patients in area hospitals. By Dec. 26, the number had doubled, to more than 600. By Jan. 7 it had doubled again, exceeding 1,200.
On Monday, the number hit a record 1,444. On Friday, it was 1,362. Christian Hospital has not seen any declines in COVID-19 patient numbers, Stevens said.
Four area Mercy hospitals, five SSM Health hospitals, BJC HealthCare Christian Hospital and one St. Luke鈥檚 Hospital facility submitted requests for staffing last week to the State Emergency Management Agency.
Christian Hospital did not request a specific number of staff. The decision to send 44 was made by the U.S. Department of Defense, Stevens said.
Mercy Hospital Jefferson requested 72 positions in total, including 67 nurses. SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital in Lake Saint Louis requested 21 nurses and one physician, according to records from the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Other hospitals did not include numbers in their requests.
The state referred the requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Last month, Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Western Missouri Medical Center in Johnson County and CoxHealth in Springfield also requested government help.
Research Medical Center received a team of 16 through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 7, a State Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman said earlier this month. The governor鈥檚 office said in a news release Friday that the team has received an extension to continue supporting the hospital through Feb. 4.
But CoxHealth was notified by FEMA that the agency cannot fulfill its request at this time, a spokesman for the hospital system said Friday. Western Missouri Medical Center鈥檚 request, which is being handled on the state level, is still open, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
This isn鈥檛 the first time hospitals have struggled to get government help.
In mid-July, when the delta variant was spreading throughout southwest Missouri, pushing case rates to unmanageable levels, the Springfield-Greene County Health Department submitted a request to the state for an alternate care site. The department coordinated with the county鈥檚 two health systems 鈥 CoxHealth and Mercy 鈥 in requesting the 50-bed stand-alone site to care for COVID-19 patients.
The Springfield-Greene County health director issued a statement 15 days later, saying the county had withdrawn the request because the hospitals were unable to wait longer for it to be fulfilled and had moved ahead with other methods of expanding staffing and capacity.
COVID-19 in Missouri and Illinois: By the numbers
NOTE: On Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) changed how it reports COVID-19 cases and deaths. The department began counting reinfections as new cases, and added epidemiologically linked cases to its counts.
On April 17, 2021, DHSS adjusted a database error that was causing individuals with both a positive PCR and antigen result to be counted as both a probable and confirmed case. This correction removed 11,454 cases that were counted twice in previous probable antigen cases, according the notation. That date's data has been removed from this display.
Beginning March 8, 2021, DHSS began posting county-level data showing "probable" COVID-19 cases detected by antigen testing. Using the historical data from the DHSS dashboard, we reconfigured this graph to include that number in the total.
Missouri updated its data dashboard on Sept. 28. 2020, to delete duplicate cases. This resulted in a decrease of total cases which caused the daily count to reflect a negative number. That date's data has been removed from this display.
NOTE: On Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) changed how it reports COVID-19 cases and deaths. The department began counting reinfections as new cases, and added epidemiologically linked cases to its counts.
On April 17, 2021, DHSS adjusted a database error that was causing individuals with both a positive PCR and antigen result to be counted as both a probable and confirmed case. This correction removed 11,454 cases that were counted twice in previous probable antigen cases, according the notation.
Beginning March 8, 2021, DHSS began posting county-level data showing "probable" COVID-19 cases detected by antigen testing. Using the historical data from the DHSS dashboard, we reconfigured this graph to include that number in the total.
Missouri updated its data dashboard on Sept. 28. 2020, to delete duplicate cases. This resulted in a decrease of total cases which caused the daily count to reflect a negative number.
NOTE: On Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) changed how it reports COVID-19 cases and deaths. The department began counting reinfections as new cases, and added epidemiologically linked cases to its counts.
NOTE: On Oct. 11, Missouri announced that a database error had resulted in an 鈥渋ncorrect inflation鈥 of cases in its Oct. 10 report
Note from 狐狸视频 Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force: The data includes patients at BJC HealthCare, SSM Health and St. Luke's Hospital. As of Jan. 17, 2022, the data includes patients at the VA 狐狸视频 Healthcare System.
Note from Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services: Note: Due to an abrupt change in data measures and the reporting platform issued by the White House on Monday, July 13, and effective Wednesday, July 15, Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) and the State of Missouri were unable to access hospitalization data during the transition. .
NOTE: On Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) began counting probable death along with confirmed deaths.