Michigan’s healthcare industry is looking for a bailout as financial pressures mount and hospital beds continue to fill up with children with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
John Karasinski, communications director for the Lansing industry group, told Crain’s in an email that the Michigan Hospital and Medical Association is pursuing unallocated and unallocated American Rescue Plan Act funds from the general fund. state to stabilize the industry.
The state has $750 million in unallocated ARPA funding and about $3 billion in a budget surplus in the general fund.
“We are pursuing potential additional funding through the state legislature to further address these needs, especially as our children’s hospitals are strained to capacity due to staffing constraints and the number of children coming to the emergency department with respiratory illnesses skyrocketed,” Karasinski said in an email. statement.
The hospital is facing a large increase in RSV in young children and running out of beds for them.
On Thursday, the University of Michigan’s CS Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor sent out a statement urging parents to speak with their child’s primary care physician before taking them to the emergency room. The hospital says its pediatric beds are 100% full, with the number of treated RSV infections increasing by 46% in 2021.
The hospital said in a press release that the spike had caused children to wait “several hours” in the emergency department for problems unrelated to RSV.
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Two weeks ago, Corewell Health East, formerly Beaumont Health, said eight of its hospitals were also running low on hospital beds. The system quickly transferred adult ICU beds to children with RSV.
A spokesperson for Corewell Health East said in an email: “Many health systems across the country will benefit from receiving ARPA funding to help offset industry-wide financial challenges caused by pandemic, pressures, and pressures. labor and inflation. “We are working with the MHA and other health systems to explore opportunities to receive ARPA funds.”
