A woman who broke her hip was among several patients who were turned away from Ascension St. Vincent's Birmingham (Ala.) and told there weren't any orthopedic surgeons available, WBRC reported Dec. 30.
The woman was taken to Grandview Hospital in Birmingham and scheduled a surgery after staff at Ascension St. Vincent’s searched for about 36 hours, the report said. All that the staff at Ascension St. Vincent’s could provide the patient was medicine to manage pain.
Similar issues have happened throughout the state and are more frequent with surges of the flu, COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, President of the Alabama Hospital Association, Don Williamson, MD, told WBRC.
"It makes it harder for patients to move from the ED up to the floor," Dr. Williamson said in the report. "We’ve still got travelers being used to help staff hospitals across the state. We’ve still got units in hospitals that we haven’t been able to reopen because they don’t have staff. If you’ve got multiple hospitals in a community and one of them suddenly is overwhelmed with lots of trauma, that may mean that the next patient with trauma doesn’t end up going to the hospital. They get routed to another hospital."
Ascension St. Vincent's Birmingham did not respond to WBRC for comment.