Slammed with COVID patients, Miami-Dade’s public hospital asks state for 100 nurses

Grappling with COVID patients that have more than tripled in number since Memorial Day weekend, Miami-Dade County’s public hospital network, Jackson Health System, has asked the state for help with its most pressing issue: hiring more nurses.

Jackson Health CEO Carlos Migoya spoke to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday night to request help, according to a hospital spokesperson, and was told he would receive 100 healthcare workers by Friday through a private staffing company. About 75 of the nurses will be “ICU-ready,” the spokesperson said.

“We think we can have them seeing patients within a few days of getting here,” said Matt Pinzur, vice president and chief marketing officer at Jackson.

But the additional nurses will only meet Jackson Health’s current needs. More reinforcements may be needed next week if Florida and Miami-Dade, the county with the most COVID-19 cases in the state, cannot slow the increase in patients, said Martha Baker, a trauma nurse and president of the labor union representing Jackson Health doctors and nurses.

“We need probably close to 100 nurses to get to where we need to be,” Baker said, noting that Jackson Memorial Hospital alone recently had about 78 nursing positions open. “If we can’t stop the peak, we’ll need another 100 next week.”

DeSantis announced the aid on Tuesday at a press conference in Miami, saying the state will send 100 “contract personnel, mostly nurses, to be able to augment [Jackson Health’s] operations.” DeSantis said the nurses are needed to help isolate and treat people coming into the hospitals for non-COVID related reasons and then testing positive.

Baker said many patients coming in for other needs, such as appendicitis or a car accident, are testing positive for COVID-19 but waiting hours in the emergency room before they can be transferred to a staffed bed in the ICU or the medical surgical floor for an overnight stay.

“The caregivers inside are stressed to the max,” Baker said. “Usually, you have a charge nurse who’s free of assignments. If I take care of two ICU patients and somebody stops breathing or their heart stops and I need help, the charge nurse is available to help. Now charge nurses are getting patients, so there’s nobody free to help in an emergency.”

About 30% to 40% of non-COVID patients at Jackson hospitals have come into the health system only to test positive in the last two weeks, according to internal data shared by the hospital network.

“I think that is something that will be very useful to them as they continue to deal not only with COVID patients, but all patients,” DeSantis said, of the additional staffing.

The governor said the federal government is also working on bringing additional nurses to South Florida, but he wanted to act sooner.

The surge staffing from the state comes on top of about 80 nurses the hospital network has hired in the last two weeks, Pinzur said, but those hires can take longer to clear hurdles such as background checks and giving notice to their former employers.

Baker said she hopes the nurses are ready to step in right away and handle the intensity of the COVID-19 crisis unfolding in the state’s largest public hospital.

“I can’t imagine the training they’re going to need to pop into one of the busiest hospitals in the country at a COVID crisis time,” she said.

Baker said the nurses don’t have to be experts in COVID-19 care, because many patients are hospitalized for other reasons.

“Jackson Memorial has 201 COVID-19 patients today and 691 patients in beds, including the ones waiting in the ER,” she said. “So really, you know, they could even help with the 2/3 of patients who are not there for COVID.”

Jackson has dealt with a month’s worth of steadily rising COVID patient numbers, with the bulk of them coming from some of the county’s poorest ZIP codes. Migoya, the CEO, has said that the hospital has been seeing waves of younger, working-age patients who have no choice but to work and, in turn, expose themselves to the virus.

More recently, internal data from Jackson shows that the hospital system is now seeing a larger number of older patients as well.

Baker told CBS4 Miami at the end of June that healthcare workers at the public hospital were struggling to keep pace with the surge of COVID patients. Many of the nurses, she said, have not gotten much of a break since the pandemic began.

Pinzur confirmed that many of the nurses who treat COVID patients have been working more shifts than usual, which he said takes a toll on their ability to help the waves of new patients arriving to the emergency department each day.

He said nurses who typically work four shifts one week and three shifts the next have been working four shifts every week to help handle the increasing number of patients.

“It can be physically exhausting,” Pinzur said.

Baker said doctors and nurses have been working around the clock at Jackson Health for weeks now, and they need the community’s help to slow the spread of COVID-19. She added that hospital workers are encouraged by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s recent emergency order closing restaurants, ballrooms, party venues and other facilities. The county also has a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, except for essential workers and those who must be out for religious reasons.

“We need the community to work with us to slow down this peaking,” Baker said, “and then we have to take care of the patients we have and see the numbers start to dwindle over time and dampen the curve.”