Y2k newswire is reporting: 8/26/99 Oklahoma City OK -- Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City has informed its Admission employees that they are not to report to work on Dec. 31st and for a "few days" thereafter as the hospital will not be accepting any patient admissions, performing surgery, etc., until they check to see if they are Y2K compliant.

My comment:

This is a pretty potent announcement. I'll have to make some inquiries to see what Mercy and St. Anthony's (the Catholic hospitals) are going to do; I think Deaconness is Methodist. I wonder if their emergency room will also be closed. But it does mean their hospital will be empty of patients, and I think that is good: it is one less vulnerable population to be concerned about, and if there is a bunch of trouble, there might be a bunch of casualties, and medical resources will be able to focus on dealing with that aspect of the disaster. I hope other hospitals follow their example.

Robert Waldrop

Archbishop Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House, Oklahoma City

Opus Justitiae Pax!

Got Printable Flyers for distribution during y2k disruptions?

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), August 27, 1999

Answers

Mr.Waldrop, much thanks for your news. This is the type of news which makes you sit up and listen and yes, I am going to bang on it one more time...it's the kind of news outside the usual polly versus doomer blame game. I wish there were more in the way of details behind this announcement.

Much thanks. It's going to be an interesting ride.

-- Bad Company (johnny@shootingstar.com), August 27, 1999.

My cousin works at Deaconess. I'll e-mail him and see if I can get any scoop.

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 27, 1999.

Thanks, Archbishop Robert :-)
Hospital work is hectic and stressful in the best of times! It would be unsafe for patients to be stuck in a hospital in the middle of the infrastructure crashing. At least in their own homes they know their way around in the dark, and are not cooped up with many other ill persons.

And the hospitals will have to become vast Emergency Rooms if Y2K goes anarchy in January. We'll know soon, won't we !*! Yow.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 27, 1999.

Where does it say they will be empty? I only read they will not be accepting and NEW admissions. If this is a big hospital or the er gets routed to lighten the load for the other ers how can this be good? Please help me out here cause I don't see how closing the doors is any good for life and death situations.

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), August 27, 1999.

Oops, Johnny, you may be right, it does say that only the admissions staff shouldn't report for duty. I didn't say that closing the ER would be good, I did say that emptying the hospital of regular patients would be good, as hospital patients are in a very vulnerable position. Granted, there are some that will have to remain hospitalized somewhere, but reducing the elective load would be a good idea.

-- robert waldrop (rmwj@soonernet.com), August 27, 1999.

Hey Robert its just that I'm a paramedic and I get kinda sensitive when er's start shutting down or not taking anymore patients. I hope this announcement will open peoples eyes and maybe the community will say " what do you mean the hospital is sutting down for a few days for y2k" and really get serious about y2k and their community. You know people associate hospitals with Dr.s and there something about hearing something from your Dr. that makes it sink in. Everybody in the world can tell you you need to stop -(fill in the blank)- but when the Dr. tells you thats when you change. I hope I get my point across.

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), August 27, 1999.

Robert, what you said doesn't make sense to me. I can see where the hospital would not take any new admissions, but certainly not emptying the hospital of its patients. Some patients are in the hospital for weeks and months. They simply cannot send those patients home.

" its Admission employees that they are not to report to work on Dec. 31st and for a "few days" thereafter as the hospital will not be accepting any patient admissions,"

What they will do is on Dec. 31 and maybe 3-4 days afterwards they will simply not accept new admissions, while maintaining healthcare for their already admitted patients. You just don't empty a hospital of patients in 3-4 days and close doors. The patients that have been admitted prior to and up until Dec. 30th will be cared for to the best of their abilities, y2k problems or not.

That is how I understand this article from the quote above. The leading headline is measleading.

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), August 27, 1999.

Chris do you just read the main post and then not read any answers?

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), August 27, 1999.

Was only supporting your post Johnny. Relax.

-- Chris (%$^&^@pond.com), August 27, 1999.

Speaking as an ex-Director of Nursing for a fairly large hospital, I can say from experience that the hospital will be fairly empty anyway. Most MDs and patients would not schedule elective surgery over the holidays anyway. So if the hospital starts restricting admissions for elective procedures about Christmas (by telling the doctors) and then not accepting patients on the Eve, their census should be pretty low on the First. However, I must admit it takes some brass gonads for the administration to take this step as it cuts into the revenue flow drastically about 60-90 days down the road. Do you suppose they know something they are not disclosing about their equipment or physical plant? Seems to me that if they know something was probably gonna break, it would be cheaper to slow admits to reduce exposure then to pay a large malpractice liablity suit settlement.

-- Lobo (atthelair@yahoo.com), August 27, 1999.

Chris, you would probably be very surprised at the turnaround time of most hospital patients these days! Surgical procedures that once required several weeks of inpatient recovery (for example, bypass surgery) now are allowed mere days -- usually well under a week, in most cases. I know a 68 year old lady who had a quadruple by-pass last week -- in on Monday and was home on Thursday afternoon.

Lobo is right. Hospital admits do decrease dramatically from about Thanksgiving on. I also agree with her view that it takes big cajones to go on the record with a plan like that. Deaconness is a 'chain' of health care facilities which includes acute care hospitals and long term care facilities. I'd love to know if this admission policy will be in force for all acute care hospitals, or just this one, and if it is just for the Oklahoma City location, what figured into the picture for them to make this decision?

-- Wilferd (WilferdW@aol.com), August 27, 1999.

When I arrived at work last night, I received notice that all workers in our hospital ( in fact, I think in the district?) have been denied vacation from Dec. 15th to Jan. 9th. This is quite interesting as the sleep lab is typically closed for two weeks over Christmas. The attached hand written comment on the notice is that 'although the [sleep] lab is still likely to close, some staff may be re-assigned over the holiday season'. Another hand written comment was to the effect that the hospital is expecting an increase in usage of 15%. Since we normally experience a large *decrease* in usage over the holidays, this indicates to me that they are preparing for a lot of problems. And this is from an administration that has been consistently insisting that Y2K concerns are blown waaay out of proportion - a major turn-around in attitude. I wonder what caused it...

-- Tricia the Canuck (tricia_canuck@hotmail.com), August 28, 1999.

Tricia...It's because of items like you just posted that made me give up hospital nursing. I dislike VERY much someone telling me what I can and cannot do with my time (and then they go sit on their ......never mind). This is why I went into business for myself. The hours are horrible, the pay is erratic. The pressure is tremendous (especially with a $15,000 per week payroll). But I can drop and bugout if I can't handle the load or if I have a prep that is time sensitive. My wife (also a nurse) receives a check from our company but is able to go and do the things I can't. She is the 'administrator' but hasn't had to go to the office for about 5 months. The real nice thing? We are closed from noon 12/31 to 9 am 1/5/2000. How? Because I said so. That's comforting.

-- Lobo (atthelair@yahoo.com), August 29, 1999.

Yep, it bothered us too that when we'd arrive on the Floor they could send us any which way for any reason, float us to a floor, building or specialty where we had zero orientation and expect us to perform 125% in continual high-pressured crisis mode with no breaks and no thanks. Got old and wearing after a while. And the scheduling was a total nightmare. They literally demanded your requests for days off a full year in advance, and often would not grant those.

It was good experience for acute running, got us physically buff before the exhaustion and pneumonia took over. We were so happy when we knew for sure we wanted to quit and go back to our homecare hospice business! We have enduring empathy for any hospital workers. Egads.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), August 29, 1999.

Got an e-mail back from my cousin who works at Deaconess. This is what he said:

"I had heard we were not scheduling any surgeries at that time. However, this is a very slow time anyway, because of the holidays. We will still be OPEN, and doing emergency surgeries, etc."

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), August 30, 1999.

Thanks for getting back to us so quickly on that, Gayla. Does your cousin mean that they will essentially be open for emergencies only? That's pretty much what happens here from ~ Dec. 23rd 'til the first Monday after the New Year most years. Not too many patients want to be in hospital over that time period anyway.

-- T the C (tricia_canuck@hotmail.com), August 30, 1999.