Shortage of beds for sick children 'not simply the result of a deluge of sick children' but hospitals' desire for money

(Washington Post graph from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data)

The surge of children with respiratory syncytial virus, influenza and Covid has left hospital emergency rooms and pediatric floors scrambling for beds and staff, report Christopher Rowland, Dan Keating and Daniel Gilbert of The Washington Post. These deep shortages are exposing decades of cuts in pediatric beds at hospitals, especially those serving rural areas, the Post reveals.

The experience of Segura Nino, 29, is playing out for parents nationwide: "Segura Nino had spent 10 sleepless hours in a suburban Houston emergency room with her 3-month-old son Maleek when she boarded a medical helicopter to Corpus Christi, 200 miles away," The Post reports. "Nino was told that Houston, a city renowned for its world-class health system, did not have a bed for one more baby with RSV." After Maleek had come home, recovered, Nino told the Post, "It's crazy to have to go to another city to get care for your child."

The Post rpeorts, "Instead of finding inpatient care at community hospitals near their homes, parents often must travel to larger children’s hospitals that have the most beds. Not only are those facilities farther away, but they also are thronged by patients from an entire region — and even from neighboring states."

The problem is not just acute, but chronic: "The shortage of beds across the United States is not simply the result of a deluge of sick children. Over the past two decades, hospital systems across the country have whittled down the supply of pediatric beds, which lose money because they often are unoccupied," The Post reports. "Even when they are occupied by sick children, pediatric beds generate less revenue for hospitals than do adult beds, medical experts say."

“The major driver is economics,” said Daniel Rauch, a pediatrician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, which "cut 41 pediatric beds, citing market pressures," this year.

Nancy Foster, the American Hospital Association's vice president for quality and patient safety policy, told The Post, “These surges in RSV and flu have reminded us that we need surge capacity beyond what we might have expected for all, including children, and I don’t know we have the perfect solution yet. We’re going to have to MacGyver our way through the next few weeks to meet the surge."