The Lack of Hospital Beds Is a National Crisis
America is experiencing a massive shortfall in hospital beds, harmful to both COVID and non-COVID patients needing care. But the pandemic didn’t create the hospital bed crisis — it exacerbated an existing one that our government refuses to address.
A medical worker treats a non-COVID patient in the ICU ward at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, 2022. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images)
The nurse apologized profusely. On a phone call earlier this month, she’d told me that my mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The next step: transferring her to a hospice to die.
But it turns out that the nurse had read me the notes from the patient in the hospital room next door to my mom.
“I’m sorry for the mixup. I’m frankly exhausted,” she told me over the phone an hour later.
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