Hospital emergency rooms suffer their annual holiday crowding

Art Nadler

Monday, Jan. 11, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

Emergency rooms throughout the Las Vegas area are in a state of emergency, and the prognosis doesn't look good for the near future.

Since mid-December area hospitals have been in a "divert" status. This means at various times during the day and night, a hospital's emergency room reaches capacity, and ambulance drivers are directed by their dispatchers to take patients to hospitals were ER beds are available.

Occasionally, every hospital emergency room reaches capacity and then ambulance services shift into a higher state of alert called "rotation." Ambulance drivers then selectively take patients to hospital ERs, and they must make room.

Michael Murphy, director of the American Medical Response ambulance service, said Thursday that hospitals have reached a rotation status several times since the holiday season began.

The overcrowded conditions are caused by several factors, Murphy said. Southern Nevada is in the middle of its flu season, Clark County's rapid growth outstretched ERs ability to serve people and individuals who don't have health insurance have no choice but to go to emergency rooms.

"This is something we go through as an annual event," said Ann Lynch, vice president of community relations with Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. "We tell people they should first go to a physician instead of the emergency room, or to an urgent care center."

University Medical Center has several urgent care centers, called Quick Cares, throughout Southern Nevada. Valley Hospital, Summerlin Hospital and Desert Springs Hospital have Faster Care Centers. St. Rose Dominican Hospital has its own UrgentCare Center at 100 Green Valley Parkway and plans to open another urgent care center in the southeast later this year.

Shauna Cuddy, communications director at St. Rose Dominican Hospital, thinks the valley's high air pollution and a stressful holiday season are affecting people's immune systems and causing them to become sick.