California spent nearly $200 million to set up, operate and staff alternate care sites that ultimately provided little help when the state's worst coronavirus surge spiraled out of control last winter.
Republican lawmakers have rebelled against new mask guidance amid the surge in cases.SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California spent nearly $200 million to set up, operate and staff alternate care sites that ultimately provided little help when the state's worstsurge spiraled out of control last winter, forcing exhausted hospital workers to treat patients in tents and cafeterias.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered alternate care sites be set up in a former professionalarena, two state centers that usually treat people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, and other facilities. The sites treated a combined 3,582 patients, records show, but half were during the first three months of the pandemic when the number of infections was still low and, as it turned out, the traditional hospital system could have handled them on its own. The sites reopened in early December, treating fewer patients during the next three months even though many hospitals were overflowing.
For instance, two vacant hospitals reopened during a surge last summer, one each in Northern and Southern California, as the most populous state overtook New York for the most cases in the nation. But it didn't use them again during the winter surge, choosing instead to work more closely with existing hospitals.
“If you look in hindsight, you could say, ‘Well, we could have used the money that we spent to rent Sleep Train and we could have put it back into the hospital system or we could have put it into procuring PPE or any number of things,’” Roberson said. “But these are lessons learned.”Officials learned to be more flexible in opening and shutting the facilities and to “quickly pivot the site to have additional value or purpose” if it wasn't needed for patients, Ferguson said.
State officials had planned to rely more on the newly formed California Health Corps of medical professionals, particularly after 95,000 people initially answered Newsom's call for volunteers.“When the health corps didn’t pan out as was hoped, travelers were the next best alternative,” said Coffman, who studies the health care workforce.
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