Feds approve military personnel for Spectrum, Beaumont; Northern Michigan hospitals seeking help

The state of Michigan this week asked the U.S. Department of Defense to supply medical staff to deal with the state's ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

The Michigan Department of HHS said Wednesday the federal government accepted its request for 44 additional military personnel to be deployed at Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn, and across Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids. FEMA previously staffed military personnel across the state last year to manage and operate field hospitals in Novi and Detroit.

The two teams, 22 personnel each, include registered nurses, doctors and therapists and will arrive next week to support hospital staff for 30 days.

Beaumont's Dearborn hospital was at 92 percent capacity with 100 COVID-19 patients as of Nov. 22, according to state figures. Spectrum's Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids is also at 92 percent capacity with 137 COVID patients.

"I'm grateful that the federal government has granted our request to provide much-needed relief to the healthcare personnel who have remained on the frontlines of this pandemic," Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a press release. "Right now, our doctors and nurses are reporting the vast majority of their patients are unvaccinated or have not yet received a booster dose. We can all do our part to help reduce the strain on our hospital systems by getting vaccinated, making an appointment to get a booster dose, and continuing to take precautions to keep ourselves and loved ones safe."

The defense department sent medical teams to Colorado, Minnesota, Montana and Utah this month. Those teams include medical doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, Mitchell said.

"DoD has provided assistance across the country over the course of this pandemic, to include active duty and National Guard personnel," Department of Defense spokesman Chris Mitchell said in an email. "This assistance has included providing nurses, respiratory therapists and medical doctors to hospitals, as well as administrative and logistic and administrative support to localities hard-hit by COVID-19."

Download Modern Healthcare’s app to stay informed when industry news breaks.

While two of Michigan's largest hospitals — which plan to merge sometime this year — are getting help, Michigan's northern hospitals are waiting in the wings for federal assistance as well.

War Memorial Hospital in Sault St. Marie is also asking for 22 nurses and two physicians to help alleviate staffing pressure, David Jahn, president and CEO of the Upper Peninsula hospital, told Crain's.

"We have a 25 percent jobs vacancy with our nursing staff," Jahn said. "We need these extra hands to come in for a period of time to give some relief to our staff and give some sanity to our employees."

War Memorial currently has 14 COVID-19 inpatients, below its peak of 23 last spring. It's non-COVID volume in the hospital's emergency department that's crushing its staff, Jahn said.

For the past four months, War Memorial's ED has averaged roughly 1,500 monthly visits, up from an average of 1,200 monthly visits in 2018 and 2019. The hospital only has one ER doctor on staff per 12 hour shift, Jahn said.

"We can handle 30 to 40 patients per day, but we're getting 60 or more right now," Jahn said.

Jahn said he hopes the federal medical personnel can assist War Memorial with providing monoclonal antibody therapies to COVID patients. The hospital has administered about 300 of the therapies, which are time consuming, in its ER. The antibody therapy reduces the threat of death from the virus by as much as 70 percent for high-risk patients.

"A couple of nurses and a physician (from the feds) to run a monoclonal clinic would really help to alleviate pressure on our ER doctors," Jahn said.

Rural hospitals are full of patients for a variety of reasons. Some of the overflow is caused by the supply chain of getting patients transferred to other hospitals for care as there is a shortage of ambulance drivers and paramedics. Other issues include short staffed nursing homes and psychiatric facilities without the ability to accept patients, thus leaving those patients stuck in a hospital bed.

Other rural hospitals simply can't afford to pay the growing overtime and large bills from staffing agencies as reimbursement hasn't kept in line with higher costs during the pandemic.

"At this point we can't continue to pay for temporary staff ... we can't continue to afford to do that and not getting extra reimbursement from Medicare or Medicaid or the Blue Cross Blue Shield," Jahn said. "We have to allow our staff to go on vacation or at least relieve them from the extra shifts they are taking."

MDHHS did not confirm whether it has filed for federal assistance for the state's Northern hospitals.

Jahn did not know the timeline either.

Michigan reported 17,008 new cases of COVID-19 and 83 deaths Monday, an average of 5,669.3 cases over a three-day period. Of the 83 deaths announced Monday, 32 were identified during a review of records.

— Editor's note: A previous version of this story did not include the second request for federal personnel, which was approved on Wednesday. The current version is accurate.

This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crain's Detroit Business.