Rochester (N.Y.) Regional Health is experiencing a high number of violence victims, overcrowding its hospitals that have already been hit by the pandemic, Spectrum Local News reported Aug. 15.
"Violence, in general, has almost become its own epidemic," Keith Grams, MD, who leads Rochester Regional Health's emergency services, told the publication. "You're dealing with the COVID pandemic issues as well as all the downstream in the community from a health care standpoint. We're having challenges with hospital capacity, which basically generally backs up into the emergency departments causing some challenges on the ground floor, as it were."
Dr. Grams continues that the difficulty of navigating this influx of violence patients and limited space is having to shift staff and patients. When a violence patient comes in, a staff member has to stop working with the patient they're with to care for the violence patient.
Additionally, Dr. Grams said most violence patients come by themselves without use of ambulatory services, meaning emergency departments have no way to prepare or know the patient will be arriving.
Rochester Regional has yet to find an efficient solution for its problem, as New York has strict state regulations on expansions preventing the health system from adding new hospital rooms, according to Spectrum Local News.