Dave Peterson, 72, of Blaine, arrived at United ER at 10:30 a.m. Thursday complaining of numbness in one hand, a possible symptom of a stroke. He arrived at the ER room at nearly 3 p.m., by which time blood tests and imaging tests confirmed he had suffered a mild stroke caused by a blood clot.
“It’s been busy,” Peterson said. “There’s a lot of people here and most of them are worse than me, so I just have to wait my turn.”
Peterson admitted it felt strange to receive medical care in a triage room and then be returned to the waiting room among other patients. His daughter helped the elderly woman next to her with her legs up in a wheelchair and a cushion on her back.
But previously, “they probably would have waited four and a half hours for something to happen,” Echols said.
Congestion upstream of hospitals remains part of the problem. Thirty of United ER’s 40 patients, including Peterson, were waiting on the upper floor of the hospital for inpatient beds to become available.
Influenza outbreaks in 14 long-term care facilities in Minnesota last week don’t help. This is an increase from eight outbreaks the previous week. Nursing homes often lose employees during disease outbreaks, which means they are unable to admit many patients when they are ready to be discharged. As a result, inpatient beds continue to fill up and emergency rooms become clogged.
