How Profit-Driven Hospital Closures Screwed Kids During the Tripledemic

[pstokely]

https://newrepublic.com/article/170030/hospital-closures-kids-tripledemic

When a children’s hospital closes, children with chronic diseases don’t just lose a home base they know and love: They lose a place that knows them—a loss which, in emergencies, can be deadly. Of course, children without chronic diseases suffer too: When they get bronchiolitis or appendicitis or hemolytic uremic syndrome, there’s one place less to go.

The closure of Tufts Children’s is part of a broader trend of hospitals shutting down their pediatric units. In recent years, one out of every five pediatric hospital units has closed.

But the pandemic intensified these trends. As adults reeled from severe Covid-19 infections, children were largely spared. All told, hundreds of thousands of children who would have been hospitalized in a typical year weren’t, during the height of the pandemic. Hospitals lost hundreds of millions of dollars from the empty beds. Adults have long been more profitable for hospitals than children; amid the gutting pandemic-era losses, some, like Tufts, took the opportunity to make the decision: They were getting out of the kid business.

Now, amid the so-called “tripledemic” of Covid, influenza, and RSV, children across the country have struggled to get the care they need. Hospitals that do still treat kids are buckling, unable to accommodate them but simultaneously with nowhere to send them. Emergency rooms are overloaded; stretchers with children needing oxygen tanks to breathe line the hallways.

Did it have to be this way?

[leftstreet]

1. DURec