The dissonance appears to stem from the way public data is integrated and when hospitals choose to obtain their numbers, which are not standardized. The result, workers say, is a better picture than reality for the country.

Benny Matthews, an emergency room nurse at Montefiore Medical Center’s Moses campus in the north-central Bronx and a board member of the New York State Nurses Association, said some patients were waiting two days to be admitted.

“It was so crowded, we had to move the stretcher from bed to bed,” Matthew said.

On Wednesday night, 32 patients were waiting for beds in the emergency room, and two patients were waiting for ICU beds, Matthew said. These were also confirmed by two other emergency room nurses. Crane On the condition of anonymity and sent two written complaints to Montefiore management in the last week of December, Crane.

However, Montefiore’s self-reported data suggest no such problem. It publicly reported that the Moses campus was at 75 percent capacity on Wednesday, with more than 200 open beds.

Responding to a detailed list of questions and findings, a Montefiore spokeswoman said in a statement: “Like other health care systems across the state battling this pandemic, we report to hospital emergency response systems on a daily basis. Submit accurate information. It is misleading and irresponsible to rely on anecdotal information and hearsay to report the state of our hospital at this critical time.”

Download the Modern Healthcare app to stay informed as industry news emerges.

The spokesperson did not answer any follow-up questions.

For hospitals, the stakes are high to keep the numbers down.If their average occupancy reaches 90%, the state may order them Suspend unnecessary selective programs– The main source of income. The state Department of Health relies on self-reported data from hospitals to make these decisions. The department has not ordered any city hospitals to suspend elective procedures, a representative said Friday.

Hospitals have until 1 p.m. each day to submit their data, but they can calculate their numbers at any time of the day — a flexibility that health care workers say can take advantage of. The public dataset also appears to combine adult and children’s hospitals and does not specify availability by bed type, although staff say beds are not always interchangeable.

worker talking to Crane Public data was compared to numbers on the hospital’s internal dashboards and inconsistencies were noted.

New York-Presbyterian Columbia Hospital in Washington Heights reported its occupancy rate of 86 percent on Wednesday, but it was about 92 percent at midday Wednesday, excluding Children’s Hospital, according to data from the hospital’s internal dashboard. The public data lists 20 available ICU beds, while the internal dashboard reports 6 adult ICU beds.

A staff member there, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a supervisor said patients could not be transferred to intensive care because open beds were reserved.The employment of the worker is independently verified by Crane.

In response to detailed questions and findings, a spokeswoman for the system said only: “We currently have sufficient ICU bed capacity.”

Kips Bay-based NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue reported publicly that it had 12 open ICU beds on Wednesday, but a paramedic who asked to remain anonymous said there were only two that morning. Although Bellevue publicly reported 93 open beds on Wednesday, the emergency room was struggling to find beds for patients who needed admission, the staff member said.

Health + Hospitals says it meets state reporting requirements and is redeploying workers understaffed facilities and required units.

“To manage the growing demand for our hospital services, we continue to rely on time-tested strategies, including system-wide load levels, surging beds, and increased nursing and clinical staff onboarding, to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to comprehensive healthcare,” a Health + Hospitals spokeswoman said.

Workers say capacity issues are intertwined with severe staffing shortages, while Micron Surge Making New Yorkers and the healthcare workers who care for them sick — a vicious circle.

Because of the intensive nature of the work, ICU nurses typically don’t have more than one or two patients at a time, Matthew said. On Wednesday, he had five.

With the city’s surge in COVID cases, the situation has yet to peak, experts say, as hospitalizations lag by about two weeks.

Although all the workers interviewed Crane They agreed that today’s COVID patients are less sick than previous waves, and they said rising hospitalizations and labor shortages are creating a perfect storm.

This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crane’s New York business.