Ron DeSantis: Hospitals engaged in hiring ‘war’ to handle COVID-19 cases

Ron DeSantis. Image via AP.

With the influx of patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the problem isn’t hospital capacity, says Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s hospital staffing.

Among hospitals reporting capacity data to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 85% of beds are being used, including 31% for COVID-19 patients as of Thursday morning. Meanwhile, 21% of hospitals providing staffing statuses are currently reporting a critical staffing shortage, and more anticipate a shortage within the week.

Hospitals have been able to expand COVID-19 units, but hiring enough staff has remained a persistent problem.

“There’s no doubt, it’s not really a capacity issue as much as it is the stress on the staff when you have higher volumes of patients,” DeSantis told reporters in Jacksonville.

The Governor described a “war” of hospitals trying to hire staff.

Meanwhile, employees move to staffing agencies rather than work directly for the hospital, a more flexible option that pays more. DeSantis described the shift to contract work as a significant change in the industry.

“They literally could have a job at a hospital, change jobs, work for a contracting agency, and then still do the same job at the hospital and make a lot more money, and it’s a lot more expensive to do,” DeSantis said.

Florida has seen record-breaking new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks. HHS showed 15,796 people currently hospitalized for the disease.

Amid the rising cases, DeSantis has maintained the current wave is seasonal and expected, and he has taken actions that promote personal liberties over virus mitigation, such as his ban on mask mandates in schools. Additionally, he holds that the delta variant hasn’t hit children harder than previous waves despite reports otherwise.

Some projections from scientists show two or three weeks before this wave of COVID-19 cases reaches its peak in Florida.

Questions also arose this week over a shipment of ventilators the federal government sent to Florida. DeSantis initially denied requesting them, sparking more questions, but the Governor’s Office says the Department of Health wanted to be prepared and wasn’t responding to an immediate shortage.

Cases have been rising across the country, particularly in the Southeast and regions with lower vaccination rates.

As for hospital staffing, the state was directly involved in trying to bring more contract workers to Florida in the early days of the pandemic.

“We have provided a lot of staff in the past for that, but our sense is that they deal with some of these agencies to try to bring people more in,” DeSantis said. “That’s just the situation that you’re seeing all throughout the country.”