Member Union Leader and Registered Nurse Erin McIntosh writes in response to an article in the Los Angeles Times (“Did L.A.’s COVID-19 hospital surge cause unnecessary deaths? ‘The public deserves an answer.’” February 18, 2021)

As a Rapid Response RN in a large Southern California hospital, I’m not surprised that COVID-19 mortality jumped from 12% to 23% during the surge.

I’ve seen more death during this pandemic than in all the rest of my nursing career combined. When the spring surge occurred in New York, COVID-19 patients were three times more likely to die in hospitals without proper staffing levels and equipment—all measured during the same time span when only the sickest were being admitted.

I’m also not surprised that hospitals here claim they didn’t ration care.

That’s because they use a very narrow definition of rationed care. But rationed care doesn’t just mean being forced to choose which patient in front of you gets a needed ventilator or other treatment. Rationed care also means the patients waiting outside in front of the hospital in ambulances for eight hours. Rationed care means waiting hours without seeing your ICU Nurse because s/he’s been given more patients than s/he can safely care for. Rationed care means there’s no bed for you in the hospital unit you belong in—the unit that has the training and equipment you need—so you’ve been “downgraded” to a unit offering less intensive care. Rationed care is the modern hospital’s business model—and the surge only made it worse.

I can tell you as a leader in a Nurses’ Union, that under Nurses’ definition of rationed care—not hospital administrators’—it is widespread. It is universal.

Erin McIntosh, RN 8-year Nurse Riverside, California SEIU Local 121RN Executive Board Member