SEIDMAN SAYS: Closure over COVID deaths something no hospital report can provide

More than an hour before the Sarasota Memorial Hospital board meeting began, dozens of drivers circled the seven levels of the hospital’s parking garage, searching for an elusive open spot. Almost 200 people filled the hallway outside the board room as security personnel urged them to “Step to the side, please!” to allow the flow of patients in wheelchairs through the corridors.

Never before had a hospital board meeting drawn such interest.

They were there for the anticipated release of results from an internal investigation into how the hospital handled patient care during the COVID pandemic. Demand for such an examination was catalyzed by the election last fall of three new board members who campaigned on a platform centered on criticism of the hospital’s handling of the pandemic. (SMH is one of only two public hospitals in the state run by an elected board; its nine members serve without compensation.)

Those who came to praise the medical staff for heroic efforts under unprecedented pressures rubbed shoulders with those who were there to criticize the hospital’s adherence to government-recommended protocols and policies that isolated patients.

With the unflappable calm he would maintain for the next four hours, Board Chair Tramm Hudson called the meeting to order. Briefly interrupted by the sound of musical notes played over the intercom, he reminded the audience it was SMH tradition to play “Brahms Lullaby” each time a baby is delivered.

Board Member Britt Riner summarized the findings in the report, derived from information gathered by an independent quality control consultant that compared SMH with more than 1,300 other hospitals across the nation. The bottom line: From the spring of 2020 to last fall, the hospital had a COVID survival rate 24% better than national benchmarks.

That is not to say that the hospital was without blemish. The report also answers specific questions raised at a heated January meeting – from concerns about COVID testing, vaccines and treatments to complaints about patient visitation and profit from protocol choices – and makes recommendations for future improvements.

Over the next three hours, more than 50 speakers gave testimony – gratefully, passionately, tearfully, indignantly. Many expressed their thanks for and unwavering faith in the hospital staff and its practices, including a couple with a “politically mixed” marriage, a cardiologist saved by treatment with the protocol drug remdesevir; and an architect who spent five months in the hospital and 55 days on a ventilator and heard the uplifting Brahms lullaby “a thousand times.”

(As if on cue – for the first of three times during the meeting – the familiar notes interrupted the comments, a gentle reminder of the other bookend of life in a room heavy with the pain of death.)

Some of the speakers spoke in anger – of loved ones and final moments lost through, the speakers claimed, SMH protocols or negligence. A man raged against the hospital’s “monolithic, corrupt system” and charged it with benefitting financially from its choice of protocol. Several speakers accused the hospital of “killing” or “murdering” their loved one.

More than once Hudson asked if the COVID deaths in question had occurred at SMH; more than once the speakers declined to say. The question of whether they had been recruited to travel from out of town by the anti-vaccine groups in attendance hung in the air unanswered, but there were equal accusations that the hospital’s supporters had tried to pack the room as well. Regardless, Hudson repeatedly urged staff to follow up with anyone who made an accusation or left the room in anger or tears.

Most of the attendees stayed until the end when the board voted, 7-2, to accept and release the report’s findings. For some, it was a bitter end, for it had brought them no closer to the resolution they sought.

I drove home, feeling exhausted and crushed by weight of collective grief. My heart hurt for the nurse who’d held up the phone so her dying patient could say goodbye to his spouse, just as it ached for the wife whose last chance to say “I love you” was spoken to a cell phone screen.

No report can ever erase the angst and trauma suffered by those who lost friends, family or good health to COVID. No amount of reassurance can assuage the second guesses of those whose patients died, despite their courageous efforts. No hospital is capable of providing closure; that’s an acceptance that can only come from within. We do our best – in the moment, under the circumstances – knowing our imperfection is what makes us human.

I’m not a traditionally religious person, but that night I felt moved to offer my equivalent of prayers:

To the staff at SMH, that they might continue their selfless work, knowing they are acknowledged, appreciated and admired.

To those whom COVID robbed of health, love or time, that they might find a way through what must seem unfathomable and irreconcilable to serenity.

And to those babies, entering the world during such a moment of sorrow, strife and division, that they might have good health, an abundance of love, the courage to change the things they can and accept the things they cannot – and the wisdom to know the difference.

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Memorial's COVID report gave answers but not closure