DALLAS — More than 80 hospitals in Texas have reported they are at or near ICU bed capacity. Dozens of hospitals are dealing with staffing shortages, and the surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations is crippling the Texas health care system once again.
In North Texas, more people are beginning to turn to stand-alone emergency rooms for treatment. Dr. Neal Agarwal, one of the owners of Frontline ER in Dallas and Houston said he is seeing an uptick in patients with a range of ailments.
"I thought we may get 10 or 20 people a day. I never imagined it would be a lot more," said Dr. Agarwal. "Hospitals are packed, ERs are packed. I'll keep a patient here for pneumonia and keep them for two days here just because there's no bed available. "
From broken bones to rashes, Dr. Agarwal is treating a high volume of patients who have steered away from hospital emergency rooms due to the fear of catching COVID-19, or being turned away. Dr. Agarwal has set aside two rooms within his six room stand-alone clinic to keep severe patients overnight. Last week in Houston, one of his COVID-19 patients needed more care than he was able to provide, so the patient had to be transported to Ohio.
"We couldn't find a single bed in Houston, Dallas, Austin, El Paso, or McAllen," said Dr. Agarwal. "We couldn't find a single bed in the whole state of Texas."
The medical team has had to deal with the shock of an emergency shutdown where some nearly lost their jobs to now, real-time super heroes who are needed now, more than ever.
"Personally I think for the next five years we'll probably have waves on and off," said Dr. Agarwal. "We'll have periods of times which are good, and it subsides. We'll have a period of time where another variant comes up. We have to enjoy the times we have breaks."
Both Frontline ER clinics offer COVID-19 shots free to the public. Dr. Agarwal said he treats most of his COVID-19 patients with the Regeneron antibody cocktail to help ease symptoms.