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New Jersey hospitals say no room for surge capacity | 01.31.2007 | 07:20:53 | Views: 4359 | ID: January 31 '07: Hospitals in New Jersey said recently that local emergency rooms are too full and that there is little room to handle a surge if there were a disaster, North Jersey reported. To underscore the overcrowding, a recent national bioterror and disaster preparedness report found the state to be among the lowest scoring in the country. Hackensack University Medical Center's Dr. Edward Yamin, who heads the emergency trauma department as its vice chairman told North Jersey, "We're running at a 100 percent capacity. ... We are frequently overcrowded. ... As soon as a bed opens up, we fill it. ... The overcrowding is from patients already admitted but waiting for assignment to go upstairs." During a hearing held at the State House in Trenton, a group of physicians told lawmakers that "it's the so-called boarders - seriously ill patients who spend hours or even days in hallways waiting for an available bed," that create the overcrowded environment. The hearing at the State House in Trenton was hosted by the American College of Emergency Physicians, who released a report recently examining ways to improve the response to a pandemic in the medical community. Dr. Ty Hartman, the chairman of emergency medicine at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville summarized one possible path to ameliorating the situation, "We need to improve overall emergency preparedness, and the mental health safety net."
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