EMSA Chief Describes January As ‘Most Difficult’ of Pandemic As Service Calls and Hospital Delays Climb

Emergency responders and medical professionals said on Wednesday that January, so far, is poised to be one of the most challenging in recent years. 

During a meeting of the Oklahoma Medical Control Board, EMSA Interim Chief Operations Officer Christopher Jenkins said the agency is on pace to receive more service calls in January than any month in the past 3 years. 

Jenkins said the same goes for bed delays, which is the time ambulances wait with a patient for a hospital bed to become available. 

“Today we’ve had multiple, multiple delays over three hours. So that patient has sat on our stretcher in the ER waiting for a bed for upwards of three hours,” Jenkins said. 

Although data of EMSA’s responses during the months of December and January will be available next month, Jenkins said preliminary numbers show preliminary data shows the average response time for the highest priority calls in December is slower than November. 

In terms of call volume and hospital bed delays, January is on pace to be the “most difficult” month for EMSA in the past three years. 

“Pretty much every day since January first, we’ve had a record number of calls coming in,” Jenkins said. 

Dr. Chad Borin, an emergency medicine physician at SSM Health St. Anthony and chair of OMCB, said the ongoing surge of COVID hospitalizations has created unprecedented challenges. 

“I’ve been in this for 23, 24 years and this is the worst I’ve seen it from a (patient) flow perspective and trying to get people taken care of,” Borin said. 

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Department of Health reported 1,210 people hospitalized with COVID-19, 407 of which are in Oklahoma County. 

Dr. Kersey Winfree, Vice-President of Medical Affairs at SSM Health St. Anthony said scheduling non-emergency surgeries is challenged by staffing changes caused by COVID infections and the recent swell of patients in the emergency department. 

“Sometimes you have to really create alternative pathways for those people to get the care that they need,” Winfree said. “That’s a very hard strain on staff.”