The governor’s failure to recognize and confront the contagion has helped lead to crisis.
The Texas Medical Center in Houston is the largest health care complex in the world, so vast it describes itself, accurately, as a “medical city.” About 106,000 people work there, traversing 50 million square feet of property. If TMC were a stand-alone business district, it would be the eighth largest in the U. S.
TMC isn’t a mere business district, however. It’s a conglomeration of more than 50 medical institutions, all nonprofits, including 21 hospitals, eight academic and research centers, four medical schools, seven nursing schools, three public health organizations, two pharmacy schools and a dental school. It is home to the world’s largest children’s hospital and the world’s largest cancer hospital. It treats eight million patients annually.
Covid-19 may soon overwhelm TMC.
So many Houston residents have been infected, and the case rate is growing so rapidly, all hospitals in the greater metropolitan area may run out of intensive-care unit beds as soon as today. If forced to tap what the industry calls “surge capacity,” the city’s hospitals estimate they’ll be filled to the brim in 10 days.
TMC, the goliath of this group, said that as of Tuesday, 97% of its 1,330 ICU beds were occupied (only 27% are currently filled by patients with Covid-19; 70% are non-Covid patients). TMC estimates it can handle a surge of about 373 more patients and, in extreme circumstances, another 504. If all those additional 877 patients are admitted, TMC’s maximum capacity of 2,207 ICU beds will be reached.
That might not take long. As of Tuesday, the Houston metropolitan area, home to about seven million people, had 32,154 confirmed Covid-19 cases, according to TMC, up from 24,885 one week ago, 14,846 a month ago, and 7,506 two months ago. Exponential growth is one of Covid-19’s calling cards.
Apart from the danger and uncertainty that clothe the coronavirus wherever it travels, two other realities are at work in these numbers.
First: Sprawling and impressive as it is, TMC has only 9,200 total hospital beds — 9,200, even though it treats eight million people a year. That reflects a broader problem with patient capacity in all U. S. hospitals. A combination of public policy, merger-happy industry dynamics that have brought about an unhealthy concentration of hospital networks, and decades of movement away from inpatient treatment has led to a nationwide shortage of hospital beds. Covid-19 has laid bare the vulnerabilities that are created when hospitals are run like assembly lines.
Second: TMC is populated by talented and brave professionals contending with what may become health care’s version of a massive tsunami — but one that might have been avoided, or at least mitigated once it swept in.
