6 hospitals recently cut services over staffing shortages

Editor's Note

At least six hospitals across the country have recently cut services or announced plans “to scale back care,” Becker’s Hospital Review July 19 reports. Staffing shortage was the reason each facility cited for the move.

The hospitals and cut services are:

• UH Bedford (Ohio) Medical Center and UH Richmond Medical Center in Richmond Heights, Ohio, will end inpatient, surgical, and emergency services on August 12.
• Beverly (Mass.) Hospital will close its freestanding birth center in September; this comes after it already had to temporarily stop taking new birth center patients in March.
• Martin General Hospital in Williamston, North Carolina, is planning to close its intensive care unit temporarily beginning August 1.
• South Lincoln Medical Center in Kemmerer, Wyoming, stopped providing labor and delivery services June 1, and the critical access hospital's OR is no longer open around the clock for emergency surgeries.
• Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, is scaling back some behavioral health services and closing its inpatient addiction recovery program and outpatient psychiatry practice.
• Memorial Hospital of Carbon County in Rawlins, Wyoming, ended labor and delivery services June 15.

Leaders of South Lincoln Medical Center said the facility was “scaling back services because it was unable to recruit the number of surgical nurses needed to maintain a full surgical team all the time,” Becker’s highlighted.

In addition, according to Becker’s July 20, citing a July 18 media briefing published by The Seattle Times, hospitals in Washington state are currently "dramatically over capacity and grappling with…strains from delayed discharges and staff shortages.”