"Gang up" of RSV, flu and short staffing create staggering waits at metro clinics, hospitals
APPLE VALLEY, Minn. – If you're looking to visit a clinic, urgent care or hospital emergency room in the Twin Cities metro, you could find yourself waiting up to, or more than, three hours this weekend.
On Friday, wait times for Allina Health's Apple Valley clinic passed two and a half hours. Elsewhere, wait times were the same or even longer.
"It's just a lot of influx of patients right now," said Dr. Todd Smith, who works to oversee Allina Health's urgent care clinics. "You get things that often go to ERs that we're now seeing in urgent care, which might take a little longer to go and work up, adding to the problem."
Smith says at Twin Cities ERs wait times can be even worse.
"It's sometimes four, five, six hours, sometimes longer on the weekends and in the evenings," he said.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, just 3% of ICU beds in the Twin Cities metro remained available Friday.
"RSV, influenza are spiking and we're getting a little bit ganged up on when it comes to infectious disease," said Dr. Will Nicholson, President of the Minnesota Medical Association. "People are staying in the hospital longer, simply because we don't have the post-acute support that they need to get them somewhere else to recover outside the hospital."
"We're hearing that [our staff is] tired," Smith said. "They love what they do, they love providing care for patients and they do it so very well…It gets to be a weight after doing it for so very long and being so busy."