Among the many lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is how cumbersome one‐size‐fits‐all regulations, administered by an impersonal bureaucracy, hamper a rapid and flexible response to an evolving public health emergency. The U.S. Navy Medical Corps provides us with the most recent example.
On March 30, the naval hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort arrived in New York harbor, with 1,000 hospital beds and 1.200 staff, ready to assist in the management of the epidemic which has taken a heavy toll on New York metropolitan area inhabitants. Yet, as of April 3, only 20 patients were being treated on the hospital ship. Three days earlier, the 1,000 bed U.S.N.S. Mercy arrived in Los Angeles, and as of April 2 treated 15 patients.
Both hospital ships were intended to take on and treat patients who are not infected with COVID-19, which serves the dual purpose of sheltering such patients from contagious COVID-19 patients in metro area hospitals while freeing up space in those hospitals for more COVID-19 patients.
But why are there so few patients aboard these hospital ships, considering the ships’ patient capacity and the size of the metropolitan areas they are serving? The answer lies in military protocols and bureaucratic rules that stand in the way.
Patients are not allowed to be directly admitted to the hospital ships and ambulances are not permitted to take them there. They must first be taken to a civilian hospital for evaluation and be tested for the virus before being transferred to the ship. Of course, this requirement does nothing to unburden crowded emergency rooms and their overworked staff.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/epidemic-red-tape
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