BOARD OKS INVESTIGATION INTO PATIENT OFFLOADING PROBLEMS

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved assigning a standing committee to research and find potential solutions to the “significant and detrimentally impactful” problem of delays at hospitals throughout Riverside County in accepting patients brought in by ambulance.

New board Chair Jeff Hewitt and Supervisor Kevin Jeffries will proceed, as members of the Fire Ad-hoc Committee, to investigate why the practice of patient offloading is faltering and how it might be remedied.

Staff from the county Emergency Management Department presented data showing a 110 percent increase in recent weeks in patient offload delays at hospitals, which officials acknowledged had been influenced by coronavirus cases, but the trend line has been pointing up for years.

“Paramedic first responders are forced to wait for extended periods of time,” EMD spokesman Trevor Douville told the board. “Since 2015, we have seen progressive and cumulative increases, and the worsening patient offload delays have impacted first responders.”

According to a statement posted to the board’s agenda by Hewitt and Jeffries, “patients having to remain on the ambulance gurney for several hours after arrival at the hospital is now commonplace.”

The ambulance delays are directly tied to offload disruptions occurring at facilities, according to the EMD.

Countywide delays in offloading were highlighted during the late fall of 2020 amid the coronavirus surge then under way, when hospitals were experiencing major challenges finding triage and bed space. However, the problem appears systemic and goes beyond demands related to COVID-19, officials said.

Officials said various measures have been implemented to solve the problem, including better communication between ambulance companies’ supervisors and hospital administrators, as well as the collection of weekly and monthly tracking data and reports connected to offloading that are circulated among administrators to underscore deficiencies.

The Fire Ad-hoc Committee is expected to hold hearings in the coming months and return to the board with a report before the end of the current fiscal year.