Hospitals Catch the Flu Fever

Ventura County hospitals have been flooded with patients suffering from the flu and other holiday-related ailments, causing doctors to speed up discharges and look to other counties for help in case emergency rooms here get even more packed.

“We’re asking all hospitals to go to their internal disaster plans,” Paul Lorenz, director of Ventura County’s Public Health Department, said Wednesday.

But the command sounds worse than it is, Lorenz said, explaining that the increase in sickness--and the resulting full hospitals--is fairly normal for this time of year.

“People shouldn’t get frantic,” he said. “We’re not in a crisis situation.”

However, all county hospitals reported Wednesday that they were at or near capacity. To comply with the internal disaster plan, hospital staff members are working to send patients home more quickly.

“We’re just expediting our discharges,” said Rita O’Connor, a spokeswoman for both St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, where the patient load was at maximum capacity.

While full hospitals are normal during the winter, when the air is colder and people get stressed out with the holidays, hospital administrators are saying this year’s numbers are even higher than usual.

In the 19 years he has been at Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital, Executive Director Michael Bakst said, he had never seen the patient count so high. The usual patient count is about 165, he said, but on Wednesday the number reached 214.

At Simi Valley Hospital, where only three pediatric beds were open Wednesday, the trend is the same.

“Since last December, we’ve had the highest continuous inpatient census,” said spokeswoman JoLynn de la Torre.

Another part of the county disaster plan includes deciding where patients could go if the crowding worsens.

Although hospitals in Santa Barbara County still have some rooms available, Los Angeles County hospitals are full, Lorenz said.

Doctors say the flu, which hits the elderly and young children especially hard, is just one of the causes of the hospital overflow.

Physicians also are treating plenty of other upper respiratory problems, such as sinus infections, along with heart conditions and broken bones.

“This is the season,” O’Connor said.

Emergency patients never will be turned away, officials promised. But people with less serious symptoms may sit in emergency waiting rooms for several hours, and elective surgeries are out for now, some administrators said.

Patients are advised to first call their family doctors to see if their ailments can be remedied without going to the hospital, where many nurses and doctors have been called in from vacations to help out with the winter rush.

No one seems to know when the coughing and sneezing will taper off, but doctors said cold-related illnesses usually last through February.

Not only are people normally sicker this time of year, the lack of hospital space probably is exacerbated because those working without health benefits wait longer to get medical attention, said Lin Glusac of the county Public Health Department. She also linked the lack of beds to hospital downsizing.

The influx of emergency room patients might also be attributed to many doctors’ offices being closed for the holidays, said Jane Misel, a spokeswoman for Columbia Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, where the hospital’s 185 beds had reached “saturation.”

Misel said the hospital’s doctors treated at least 100 patients suffering from flu symptoms so far this week.

Influenza A is the diagnosis for many of the incoming patients at Community Memorial Hospital, Bakst said. But he also blamed a “broad spectrum” of other ailments--heart conditions, upper respiratory problems and broken bones--for sending people to the hospital.

And hospital officials countywide are saying that the holiday season--during which people pass their germs along by hugging, kissing and shaking hands--is a key culprit in the rise in wintertime illnesses.

“All I can say is, do a lot, a lot, a lot of hand washing,” Bakst said. “The flu can be spread by sneezing or touching and you could just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

FYI

Those who still want to get a flu shot can call the Ventura County Health Department at 800-781-4449, Ext. 2.