{"id":206281,"date":"2020-04-26T07:56:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-26T07:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206281"},"modified":"2020-04-29T05:32:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T05:32:24","slug":"houston-looking-at-dismantling-17m-temp-hospital-that-didnt-see-a-single-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=206281","title":{"rendered":"Houston Looking at Dismantling $17M Temp Hospital That Didn’t See a Single Patient"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tathasta \u2013 April 25, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One thing the coronavirus outbreak has taught us is that we have limited resources, at least when it comes to funding.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider that the funds set aside for small businesses in the Paycheck Protection Program ran out in a matter of weeks. And that\u2019s the federal government. State governments have even less budgetary room to play around with, and counties have even less money.<\/span><\/p>\n

So imagine what Harris County, home to Houston, must be feeling right now given that when it\u2019s all said and done, they will have spent about $17 million on a temporary hospital that has yet to see a single patient.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0KPRC-TV<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, the\u00a0coronavirus<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0hospital could have cost Harris County as much as $60 million. Instead, the final price tag will likely be around $17 million, even though the facility did virtually nothing \u2014 which is why it could soon be closed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cConstruction on the temporary medical shelter began just over two weeks ago and was finished in a matter of days. It features 250 beds and is equipped to handle an influx of COVID-19 patients,\u201d KPRC reported of the temporary hospital, which is situated at NRG Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be caught flat-footed,\u201d Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said back when officials thought the hospital was necessary. \u201cWe are working to stay ahead of this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t just that Harris County stayed ahead of coronavirus to the extent that the hospital didn\u2019t need to see a single patient. It\u2019s also about the fact that Harris County had a dubious arrangement with Garner Environmental Services, which designed the hospital and has helped run it.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, various security officers at the site received daily remuneration of $2,875, $2,300 and $2,012, KPRC reported.<\/span><\/p>\n

A finance section chief made $2,875 a day, the outlet added.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, two public information officers reportedly made $2,012 a day. That might not seem that bad until you realize the contract stipulated that \u201ccontact with the news media, citizens of\u00a0Harris County<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0or governmental agencies shall be the responsibility of the county.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And while the hospital was constructed before Houston was experiencing peak resource usage, the city never came close to using enough beds to divert patients to the makeshift facility.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still within the hospitals\u2019 abilities to handle the load,\u201d Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the day before the contract with Garner was signed.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be fair, the federal government has said it will cover 75 percent of the cost for the hospital, which means the good news for Harris County is that they won\u2019t have to pay the full $17 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the bad news is that\u00a0you\u2019ll<\/em>\u00a0have to pay for it if you pay federal taxes. And for a county, $4.25 million is still a fair amount of money.<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/ellencarmichael\/status\/1252935181176102914<\/p>\n

As for the people behind the hospital, don\u2019t expect them to explain it, either. John Temperelli, vice president of Garner Environmental Services, had scheduled two interviews with KPRC. On both occasions, the outlet reported, he canceled.<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case, county officials are looking at ending the contract and dismantling the hospital.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCounty officials, including the health department and NRG representatives, met Wednesday morning to discuss the future of the temporary healthcare facility at NRG Park,\u201d\u00a0KPRC<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0reported.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time that we do everything we can to begin the process of unwinding and cutting the cost on this hospital,\u201d County Commissioner Jack Cagle said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCagle said he has informed Commissioners Court that he will bring an agenda item next Tuesday to discuss the termination of the contract,\u201d according to the outlet.<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first makeshift hospital that didn\u2019t even see a patient. In Seattle,\u00a0a medical center constructed at the CenturyLink Field Event Center also turned out to be\u00a0a huge waste of resources<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and was dismantled earlier this month after not being populated by a single individual who didn\u2019t work there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t let this decision give you the impression that we are out of the woods. We have to keep our guard up and continue to stay home unless conducting essential activities to keep everyone healthy,\u201d Washington\u00a0Gov. Jay Inslee<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe requested this resource before our physical distancing strategies were fully implemented and we had considerable concerns that our hospitals would be overloaded with Covid-19 cases. But we haven\u2019t beat this virus yet, and until we do, it has the potential to spread rapidly if we don\u2019t continue the measures we\u2019ve put in place.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, I don\u2019t blame these officials one bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main model for health care capacity was the University of Washington\u2019s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model, which was way off in terms of hospital capacity needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, take their prediction for New York City. The IHME model predicted NYC would need over 50,000 hospital beds on April 1. The actual number\u00a0was just over 12,000<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. If you were an engineer and you were that far off, you\u2019d be doing time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of Harris County, you do have to consider the fact they apparently signed the worst contract since\u00a0Ryan Leaf\u2019<\/strong><\/span>s<\/a>\u00a0rookie deal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from that, though, it was the overcooked models that were responsible for this. In almost every city, the apocalyptic predictions of massive hospital overflow never came true; they all had enough capacity to deal with patients.<\/span><\/p>\n

When this is over, we need to figure out why the\u00a0models were so very wrong<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newly built hospital established specifically to treat coronavirus patients closed after just two weeks <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206284,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206281\/revisions\/206284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}