PITTSBURGH — A small group of UPMC nurses began a 24-hour vigil at the Pittsburgh-based health system's Downtown headquarters on Wednesday to protest emergency room wait times that have stretched to an average 20 hours at UPMC Altoona Hospital in rural central Pennsylvania.
The protest came as hospital systems across the region were looking for ways to cope with overloaded emergency rooms, staffing shortages and rising COVID-19 cases.
On Wednesday, Allegheny Health Network issued guidance to patients seeking medical attention to prevent long waits and backups at hospitals. The 14-hospital system advised patients to only seek care in an emergency room in cases of chest pain, stroke symptoms, difficulty breathing or other conditions that could be life threatening.
Video visits, doctor's office appointments and urgent care centers are options for patients with less serious problems such as seasonal allergies, ear infections and minor cuts and burns, AHN said.
A fall surge in COVID-19 cases has been crowding emergency rooms throughout Western Pennsylvania with rural hospitals, like UPMC Altoona, especially vulnerable because some nursing homes have suspended admissions due to staffing issues.
On Monday, UPMC Chief Medical Officer Donald Yealy said emergency rooms across the state were experiencing longer than normal wait times. "Simply put, more people want and need care from fewer people, demand is exceeding supply — something true across the entire U.S.," he said in a statement.
Other rural Pennsylvania counties are also seeing overloaded hospitals. Bradford Regional Medical Center in McKean County, for example, is seeking state health department approval to double the number of its beds to 20 to absorb a backup in patients caused by nursing homes that can't hire enough people to care for patients.
"We have more COVID-19 patients who are sicker, longer lengths of stay and no way to transfer them to nursing homes," Upper Allegheny Health System COO Richard Braun said Wednesday during the system's annual public meeting, which included a review of problems at its affiliate Bradford Regional. "So, we're jammed up a bit and can't push people through the system."
Bradford Regional reduced its bed count to 10 in May from 107 due to financial problems, partly caused by a shutdown of nonemergency medical procedures last year that was ordered by Gov. Tom Wolf to slow the spread of the coronavirus. A $10 million loss for the hospital was anticipated by year's end, Mr. Braun said.
After being treated, patients have to stay in Bradford Regional's emergency room. "There is nowhere else to put them," Mr. Braun said. "Everywhere is full."
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, about a dozen nurses represented by the SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania labor union planned to conduct a sidewalk vigil on Grant Street outside U.S. Steel Tower through Thursday morning in support of better pay and improved nurse-to-patient ratios, which they say would cut the wait time for patients in UPMC Altoona's emergency room in Blair County.
"Invest in nurses," UPMC Altoona medical intensive care unit nurse Sandy Wagner said. "That's all we're asking. Our patient rooms are full. The COVID-19 pandemic was the tipping point."
Lenn Oppell, a step-down unit nurse at UPMC Altoona, said nurses had turned down wage bonuses that ranged between 50 cents and $2 an hour, saying they were "laughable" in light of the much higher hourly wages UPMC pays staffing agency nurses.
In a statement, UPMC said it had implemented a number of incentives to attract and retain nurses and other health care providers, but they had been rejected by SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania.
