Flu putting strain on RMCH
Hospital forced to cancel elective surgeries to keep up with patients

Rehoboth McKinley County Hospital emergency room technician Jimmy Johnson calls a doctor to the phone Tuesday night from the ER's nurses' station. Flu cases in the ER have gone up drastically in recent days, packing the waiting room to capacity and making bed space scarce at times. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — An early flu season has put additional strains on local hospitals and clinics, but doctors say they're coping.

"Our hospital's pretty much full," said Elaine Bobo, a spokeswoman for Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital. "We've had to cancel elective surgeries because we simply don't have enough beds for them."

Hospital staff decided to cancel two elective surgeries Wednesday and again today for the lack of beds, according to Bobo. They're making those decisions on a day-to-day basis.

"It's not a huge problem, but it is an inconvenience," she said.

According to Bobo, the need for beds for flu patients has also kept staff from taking patients out of intensive care units as soon as they would otherwise.

It's not just a local problem, Bobo added. Hospitals from Albuquerque have even called to ask if Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital had spare beds for their patients.

"So it really seems to be a statewide issue," she said.

However, Grants Internal Medicine physician, Dr. David Pitts, while working in the Cibola General Hospital emergency room Tuesday afternoon, said the hospital is not swamped with flu patients.

"We are seeing a lot of colds in our practice, but not a lot of flu," he said.

The early arrival of the flu season forced the Indian Health Service's hospitals and clinics to withhold their vaccine supply from all but their most at-risk patients up until Christmas, said Dr. Doug Peter, Indian Health Service's local director of medical services. But thanks to a recent shipment, he said, they've started vaccinating more freely.

Its Gallup-area hospitals and clinics are on track to vaccinate more people this year than last, Peter said. They vaccinated a total of approximately 65,000 people last year. So far this season, they've vaccinated 60,000.

This season has been busier than last, agreed Dr. Oscar Palomo, an emergency room physician at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital.

Granted, last year was uncommonly light, he said, despite the news of vaccine shortages across the country.

Even so, he added, this year's flu season did hit especially early, arriving before Christmas.

The hospital has plenty of vaccine, Palomo said, and that's only good as a preventative measure. What those who've already caught the flu need is the medication to treat it, and that too seems to be in adequate supply for now, he said.

But even then, Palomo said, "the medications only work if (the patients) come in within 48 hours of the symptoms."

Even with the medication that's available, some 36,000 people die from the flu or its complications each year, he said, most of them children, elderly and those with other chronic medical conditions.