The Texas government will contract with out-of-state healthcare workers to cope with the fourth wave of the pandemic threatening to overwhelm major hospital systems.
“This help could not come fast enough,” Ted Shaw, CEO of the Texas Hospital Association, said on Tuesday. “We look forward to a swift influx of out-of-state personnel, coordinated by the state through staffing agencies.”
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican and ally of former President Donald Trump, released a series of executive actions on Monday to address the increasingly dire situation in many hospitals that are nearing capacity, coupled with an acute shortage of providers. This comes after the trauma of the last year-and-a-half led many to move to different hospital systems or quit the field altogether.
“The hospital industry is losing front-line staff, particularly nurses, to burnout and illness. Many have left the profession due to the extreme nature of the work during a relentless pandemic,” Shaw said.
The early summer surge in hospitalizations due to the delta variant in Texas coincided with similar hospital admission increases in other states, such as Arkansas and Florida, experiencing a drastic upswing in new cases. Roughly 9,500 COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized in Texas, a level not seen since February, according to Texas Tribune.
Abbott also requested in writing that hospitals voluntarily postpone surgeries “for which delay will not result in loss of life or a deterioration in the patient’s condition” to free up staff and available bed space. Last year, Abbott did not give hospitals the option to proceed with medically nonessential procedures. He banned elective procedures in 100 counties last July and did not lift the ban until September.
Several hospitals, unable to cope with the influx of new coronavirus patients, are nearing their breaking points. The Harris Health System in Houston erected roughly 2,000 square feet of medical tents outside of the Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital building to serve as overflow triage centers in anticipation of a patient surge, CNN reported.
“There is no pre-determined time for when they will begin to be used, but they want the tented environment to be ready to go in the event they are needed,” Harris Health spokesman Bryan McLeod said on Monday.
Meanwhile, Texas Medical Center CEO William McKeon sounded the alarm last week, saying hospitalizations across the sprawling hospital system “are escalating at a pace we have not observed since the highest COVID-19 peak in summer 2020.” He added that a majority of hospitalized patients are young and unvaccinated.
Texas had a solution to staffing shortages until recently when it ended a state hiring program that used roughly $5 billion in federal pandemic relief funding to contract nurses and personnel through staffing agencies within Texas.
The state hiring initiative worked well from April 2020 to June 2021. Texas hospitals could hire supplementary staff without a lengthy interviewing and vetting process. But as hospitalization admissions began to wane and vaccinations picked up steam this spring, the state started pulling staff from those hospitals. Now, local health and government officials have the authority to hire the necessary personnel using federal dollars sent to them directly.
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Abbott encouraged Texans to get vaccinated on Monday but said he would not implement a vaccine mandate similar to those in several Democrat-led states. Vaccination rates in Texas slowed toward the end of June, and coverage across the state is inconsistent.
Counties in southwest Texas have some of the highest concentrations of vaccinated people, with 50% or more people receiving at least one dose of vaccine. Hidalgo County, located on the U.S.-Mexico border, has given at least one dose of vaccine to over 82% of people 12 and older. However, in Tarrant County, where Dallas is located, about 60% have received at least one dose.
To date, roughly 53% of all Texans have received at least one shot, and about 45% have been fully vaccinated.
