Hospitals focused on essential services and conserving supplies Tuesday, as the icy conditions continued to delay deliveries and make it difficult for doctors, nurses and other staff to get to work.
Other players in the health care system struggled to do their jobs. The American Red Cross faced difficulty delivering blood to hospitals. Dialysis patients had a hard time getting to clinics or learned that their clinic was closed. Home health providers had to rely on telephone conversations instead of in-person visits.
Hospitals around the city jammed cots into conference rooms and set aside empty patient rooms so that workers could continue to sleep at the hospital, as many have done for several days. While area hospitals had adequate supplies on Tuesday, they worried delivery problems would continue. Most hospitals closed clinics and outpatient facilities and proceeded with only essential surgeries to try to limit the use of blood, food and other supplies.
"It’s just all about conservation at this point, not knowing what the future is going to entail in the next couple of days," said Lance Skelly, spokeman for Emory University Hospitals.
At WellStar Health System hospitals, staff and family members used their own four-wheel drive vehicles to pick people up.
For Quinton Robinson, that meant driving about 20 miles from the Acworth area where his family lives to WellStar Kennestone Hospital in Marietta, said his wife, Michelle Robinson, an administrator. “If there’s a need, he wants to help, and my son is helping out right along with him,” Mrs. Robinson said.
Blood supplies were lower than usual at hospitals because of delivery problems. "It's very difficult for our couriers to get to many of the locations and it's taking an extraordinary amount of hours to get there," said TracyeBryant, an American Red Cross spokeswoman. "We have been heavily impacted by this severe storm."
Bryant said the Red Cross was communicating closely with its hospitals to avoid a crisis, while also beginning to plan for the shortage in supplies that will hit because of blood drives cancelled this week.
At Grady Memorial Hospital, members of the National Guard helped crucial staff get to the hospital on Monday, said spokesman Matt Gove.
Other medical workers have driven in or taken MARTA – helping to relieve doctors and nurses who have been sleeping at the hospital.
The travel hasn't been easy. An eastbound MARTA train arrived less than two minutes after Svathi Reddy, a Grady psychiatrist, walked onto the platform Tuesday morning. It was the most luck she had all day. Reddy said she got on the southbound red line at Medical Center, but had to get off at Lindbergh because of service problems. She waited there for an hour, but had no choice.
“I’m the only attending doctor,” she said. “If I don’t come in, nobody is there.”
Though the emergency room remained slow during the storm, doctors are now seeing more patients suffering from falls, as well as people who can’t get to their doctors because offices are closed or other reasons, Gove said.
“We’re not seeing nearly as many traffic accidents because people just aren’t driving,” he said.
Gove added that many of Grady’s outpatient services, including most health centers and specialty clinics, were closed on Tuesday and could remain that way today.
The emergency rooms at Grady and at Gwinnett Medical Center saw dialysis patients because of clinic closures or because of travel conditions to the patient's usual clinic.
Visiting Nurse Health System, which delivers home health services, simply couldn't make it to most of its patients' homes, said Mark Oshnock, the non-profit's president. Instead, nurses and therapists reached their patients by phone for a "virtual visit."
"We’re trying to walk our patients through what we would do if we made a home visit," Oshnock said. That might mean a nurse checking on medications or a surgical wound, or a physical therapist offering step-by-step instructions for exercises needed to recover from an orthopedic surgery. Visiting Nurse Health System cares for about 2,000 patients across metro Atlanta -- most of whom have recently been discharged from the hospital.
Staff Writer Chris Joyner contributed to this article.
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