The health care crisis in Michigan hasn’t let up, even as life has largely returned to “normal,” more than three years after the pandemic started. Severe staffing shortages are slowing down the system and making it harder for patients to get the care they need.
If you’ve been hospitalized or in the ER recently, you’ve seen it first-hand: Bed shortages mean patients can be warehoused in the ER for hours, even days. Ambulances have to get rerouted. And nurses say they are dangerously understaffed, leading to even more burnout and shortages.
That’s despite the fact that taxpayers have given Michigan hospitals billions of dollars since the start of COVID — even as CEOs and hospital executives are making millions.
On Wednesday and Thursday on Michigan Radio, Morning Edition and Stateside are looking at the causes of the staffing crisis, the effects on patients and healthcare workers, and possible solutions. Tune in Wednesday and Thursday on Morning Edition from 5 to 9 a.m. and on Stateside at 3 and 8 p.m.
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Michigan’s health system is at a critical juncture, researchers say. If conditions don’t improve soon, there could soon be a “spiral of additional resignations” that “threaten the delivery of essential care.”
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Nurses across the state say dangerous levels of understaffing are becoming the norm, even though hospitals are no longer overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.